Doing nice things with Intraweb + jQuery!

Well, the first example I saw using Intraweb and jQuery playing together was a nice post from Hadi Hariri (Originaly here, but the page is gone. You still can read it in google cache, here).
Then, in IW 10 I saw a new component "TIWjQueryWidget". Fotunately, it came with sources, and I could see that it is simple, very simple indeed.
I already knew a little about jQuery and I saw that it would be relatively simple to use in with Intraweb (would it?).
What do you think that IW misses most? For me: Maybe, a nice Ajax enabled data grid, modal dialogs, a nice looking page control/tab sheet container, some mask inputs and some other minor things. Well, I've started from the most challenging one (at least, before any knowledge about it!): the data grid. I've choosen jQGrid. A nice, beautiful, simple and well written ajax grid. I wish (Win32) Delphi's DBGrid was as good as (Web) jQGrid!
Many, many hours of work during my spare time, almost a second divorce ;-) and voilá! I've made it work! Not much Delphi code, but due to the lack of Intraweb source code, books, articles and examples I had to search every little piece of information in newsgroups, blogs and IW - very restrict - sources. Now I see why IW is not a killing framework to create web applications: Chad kept the source code closed for toooooo damn long (still today)! It is just too hard to understand the "meat" of IW without the source code! The reason that thousands of developers started to write good components for Delphi - making Delphi a terrific tool back in 1995 - was just because the best teacher was there in your hard disk: RTL/VCL sources!

Well, back to IW + jQuery: The jQGrid is working. A limited version of it, but it works pretty damn good for now. I'm proud and happy to use it today in a production environment, in a respected brazilian bank (internal) web application. This bank is among the 60's biggests in the world. For you foreigner that may ask "what? a brazilian bank?". You'd better think twice! Brazil has one of the most advanced banks in the world, when we talk about software and technology (the same can be said about elections! After all, we knew our next president 3 HOURS after the voting finishes ;-) ).

Soon I will put some IW + jQuery demos live, at work!

Below a little screen shot of my IWjQGrid using the old "country" table, from Delphi demos!



I would like to know what you think about it.