Jörn Zaefferer is a software developer and a consultant from Köln, Germany. He is currently working at Maxence Integration Technologies GmbH. His work is centered on developing web-based applications as JSR-168 portlets in JEE environments, mostly Websphere Portal 5.1 based. He is currently working on a project based on JSF and Spring.

Dave Methvin has more than 25 years of software development experience in both the Windows and UNIX environments. His early career focused on embedded software in the fields of robotics, telecommunications, and medicine. Later, he moved to PC-based software projects using C/C++ and web technologies.

Dave also has more than 20 years of experience in computer journalism. He was Executive Editor at PC Tech Journal and Windows Magazine, covering PC and Internet issues; his how-to columns on JavaScript offered some of the first cut-and-paste solutions to common web page problems. He was also a co-author of the book Networking Windows NT (John Wiley & Sons, 1997).

Currently, Dave is Chief Technology Officer at PC Pitstop, a website that helps users fix and optimize the performance of their computers. He is also active in the jQuery community.

Paul Bakaus is a programmer and core developer living in Germany. His work with jQuery has been focused on transforming jQuery into a high-speed library capable of handling difficult large-scale rich interface operations. He was largely responsible for creating the jQuery Dimensions plug-in and he now works together with Stefan Petre on the rich effects and components library Interface. Paul is currently involved in creating a JavaScript multiplayer game featuring jQuery.

Dan Bravender has been working with open-source software for over 10 years. His fondest memories are of staying up all night to install and compile Linux in college with his roommate. He has collected a massive collection of German board games. When not playing board games, he enjoys playing soccer and hockey and studying Korean and Chinese etymology. He misses working with Karl and Jon and is very proud of all the hard work that they put into this book.

Mike Alsup is a Senior Software Developer at ePlus where he works on J2EE and web development projects. He is a graduate from Potsdam College and has been serving the software industry since 1989. Mike lives in Palmyra, NY with his wife, Diane, and their three sons.

His jQuery plug-ins can be found at http://malsup.com/jquery/.