Use jQuery - Blog - The best of the best jQuery resources #1

jQuery Performance Rules - Create an Image Rotator with Description (CSS/jQuery) - Building a jQuery/PHP Powered Chat Room - 7 Things I wish I had known about jQuery - A Plugin Development Pattern - jQuery BBQ: Back Button & Query Library - jQuery Before/After Plugin - jPlayer - maxImage Plugin - jQuery ListMenu Plugin

Introducing you to the 'The best of the best jQuery resources' series

STOP before you are scrolling down thinking 'awesome stuff'. Each resource of this weekly series is worth checking out. Someday you will use the knowledge in a personal project or a plugin in a client project.

Five handpicked tutorials and plugins each week. Learn, grow, get better and use the best plugins!

If you want to share a resource do two things: 1) Make sure it's the best of the best and 2) shoot a tweet to @usejquery and let us know. Thanks!

Tutorials

jQuery Performance Rules

The usability of your website decreases if the visitor have to wait too long for a page to load. One step to speed it up is to write good jQuery code. In jQuery Performance Rules you will learn 11 simple steps to speed up your code.
Create an Image Rotator with Description (CSS/jQuery)

Rotating/Sliding images is a hot topic in the jQuery world and there are great ready solutions out there. But you are curious right? You want to know how things work. In Create an Image Rotator with Description (CSS/jQuery) by Soh Tanaka you learn how to create a good looking and solid working image rotator.
Building a jQuery/PHP Powered Chat Room

Ajax is one of the most hyped about techniques in modern websites. Why? Because it rocks, period. Chris Coyier is showing you in Building a jQuery/PHP Powered Chat Room how to properly using Ajax in jQuery.
7 Things I wish I had known about jQuery

You can never know enough about jQuery. Always try to learn new things. Maybe you can find one or two or seven things to learn about in 7 Things I wish I had known about jQuery.
A Plugin Development Pattern

You are ready! You want to share your jQuery skills with the rest of the community in form of a plugin. But where to start? Plugin Master Mike Alsup gives you A Plugin Development Pattern. THE pattern.

Plugins

jQuery BBQ: Back Button & Query Library

If you use Ajax in your site and still want to provide bookmarking and a working back button jQuery BBQ: Back Button & Query Library is a must use plugin. The plugin is minified 3.2kb small because it is very smart coded. Take a minute and check out that pretty source code.

Watch Ryan Bates of Railscasts getting a ajaxified pagination ready for bookmarking and back button support in this screencast.
jQuery Before/After Plugin

Need to show the difference between two images? The jQuery Before/After Plugin does exactly that in the most useful and beautiful way. Control the viewport by dragging a bar to the left or right.
jPlayer

You develop a website for a band and of course they want a music player integrated. You don't want to mess with Flash because you are already using your all-time friend jQuery. Lucky you, happyworm have developed jPlayer for you.

All you have to do is placing a flash file in your project and enjoy the work. This plugin is also ThemeRoller ready.
maxImage Plugin

Big background images are sexy but a pain to proper scale on different browser sizes. With the jQuery maxImage plugin it is a piece of cake. Make sure to check out the home page demo with the fine lady and resize your browser window.
jQuery ListMenu Plugin

A huge amount of data in a list is hard to display without losing focus and the ability to quickly jump to another point at the list. One way to solve these problems is with the jQuery ListMenu Plugin. Fully customizable by CSS this is a also a pretty solution. Don't waste space in your web application, make it pretty and useful.