paul January 09, 2007 at 04:40 AM

• jquery
• it’s small and it’s the easiest to use (for me at least)
• it’s ability to do lots of stuff, from ajax, to effects, etc
• no!
• for most part it seems overkill and overly complex

Milian Wolff January 09, 2007 at 05:44 AM

which libraries do you use?
jQuery only – it’s so unbelievable powerful and lightweight at the same time – I can suggest without hesitation!

why did you choose them?
Active development, lightweight, plugins, … it just does what ever I want it to du!

what are the most important aspects of a library when using it for huge web applications?
Lightweightness again – this saves money. The lib should be able to do whatever I want it to do and be extensible.

should I use Prototype?
no

why shouldn’t I use Prototype?
‘cause it’s freaking bloated

Rob January 09, 2007 at 07:17 AM

I definitely cast my vote for jQuery.

kb January 09, 2007 at 10:24 AM

dojo has a nice packaging system and they just release some code so you can have offline sites. Kinda cool.

prototype really sux when you want to start integrating other libraries. that kind of pain can only be felt first hand 80% of the way in on a big project.

Webstandard-Team January 09, 2007 at 06:21 PM

I prefer jQuery too. The best choice to seperate JavaScript and (X)HTML code.

Tristan Juricek January 09, 2007 at 06:36 PM

At work, I’ve been exploring similar things. I’ve been using dojo, largely because there was a FilteringTable widget that was exactly what I wanted. Dojo tends to have so-so quality, however. For example, I have yet to employ more than 1-2 complex widgets on a page that works under most modern browsers. So, I would hesitate before including dojo in my project.

Otherwise, the dojo community is fantastic, and it is a wonderful code base for reference. I put YUI in this boat: not really what I want to use, but fantastic to have a copy of.

Richie January 09, 2007 at 09:40 PM

I use and recommend prototype + scriptaculous. I think it´s easier to find tutorials, wp-plugins, classes, and other stuff ready to use (until now). Also, is highly flexible.

Jonathan Snook January 10, 2007 at 01:46 AM

Choosing a library will depend heavily on what you’re trying to accomplish with it.

Jquery and Mootools are great options for quick animations, effects, DOM manipulations like expand/collapse stuff. If you’re putting together a web site and want to add in a sprig of interactivity then either of these are good ways to go. They’re compact and easy to use. My personal feeling is that Jquery is more mature and better tested. It’s simply been around longer than mootools.

Prototype is an amazing beast but much of it is geared towards applications, working with datasets, string templates, and of course, DOM manipulation. Scriptaculous and Rico run off of Prototype and give you some decent pre-built components. Scriptaculous is great for 90% of the effects you’ll need to pull off but a pain for the other 10%.

YUI is hard to classify. First, you can tell that this is built by a corporation that understands what’s involved. It’s the only one of any of the libraries I’ve mentioned that doesn’t try to use $(). Jquery tries to be smart and reroutes any existing $ function into an internal one but that seems pointless if any of your code is expecting $ to return specific methods. So, YUI is very unobtrusive. But I find it also takes a heavily function-oriented approach to things instead of something like Jquery that uses chainable methods in a really cool way. YUI has thought through the interaction models required in complex systems like drag and drop that many of the other libraries haven’t.

Dojo seems heavily focused on widget building. If you need out-of-the-box widgets, Dojo might certainly be the way to go.

Finally, often times, it’s the add-ons that make the difference. Jquery has a ton of people contributing some cool stuff like Thickbox and Interface. YUI has YUI.ext. Prototype has Scriptaculous.

So, here’s my summary:
Web sites: use Jquery
Web applications: Prototype/Scriptaculous
Web applications but with more custom enterprise stuff: YUI/YUI.ext
Out-of-the-box Interface widgets: Dojo

(there’s certainly some interlap and of course, you could pull off anything with any of the libraries if you wanted to… this is just my pigeon-holing.)

Wolfgang January 10, 2007 at 02:36 AM

Thanks for your input – we will definitely need something flexible and modular since it’s a quite complex client-side web application respectively application framework. Maybe I should take another look at YUI :)

infomaniac January 10, 2007 at 04:51 AM

We use Dojo for our projects.

IMHO, the possibilities that Dojo offers are absolutely great and it’s got an enormous amount of functionality out of the box and you can customize everything. (e.g. we customized the drag’n’drop stuff to use additional custom parameters…)

The downside, though, is that the documentation is nearly inexistent and if there is documentation, it’s very limited and not really useful.

The second problem is also, that when they have a new release available, I wouldn’t bet on that everything working with the previous release will be working with the new release… so at least that’s my experience.

Have fun!

Mislav January 10, 2007 at 11:00 PM

Snook summed it up very nicely in a comment above. Use YUI for complex UI that needs to be incredibly robust, otherwise use Prototype. jQuery is neat but just doesn’t cut it here.

Marko Mihelcic January 14, 2007 at 01:36 AM

Yeah I would use Prototype. Nuff said :)

Kjell Bublitz January 15, 2007 at 07:34 AM

- Which libraries do you use?
I use prototype with script.aculo.us and behaviour.js for graceful degration

– Why did you choose them?
Easy to understand, nice to read and work with. Lots of cool addons and flexible. Also script.aculo.us worked from day one as promised and introduced me to prototype. I tried several ones but most lacked of simple documentation or looked way too bloated. – What are the most important aspects of a library when using it for huge web applications? Flexibility, compactness and wide browser support – Should I use Prototype?
As Snook said, it depends on what you are up to. I used prototype for everything to date and i can’t say that i’ve regretted it. If you know the prototype-way of “how to do stuff” you might even fell in love with it, as i did. But i am not a designer and as being said, prototype is more for manipulation and data operations. But with scriptaculous again, its an good allround package. The upcoming version comes with css morphing, which will open alot of interresting possibilities for interface scripting. – Why shouldn’t I use Prototype?
This is where worlds collide. Some people really hate prototype, moo-people bash the filesize and others say it is limited to some extents or has design flaws. And even more say that the project is not maintained well enough.

But all these points won’t make go away from prototype, simply because i am too happy with it. I tried YUI once and have to admit that it is too complicated, plus the code readability is awful.. who wants 100 times YAHOO in his code? seriously..

:)

andy January 16, 2007 at 11:01 PM

I work with Prototype+Script.aculo.us, but Qooxdoo might be worth to at least take a look at since IBM switched from Dojo to qooxdoo for der Rich Ajax Platform (RAP).

Modo January 21, 2007 at 08:02 AM

“who wants 100 times YAHOO in his code? seriously…”

This is pointless. You can create your own tiny names in the beginning of your app, pointing to YAHOO names.

Sigurd January 21, 2007 at 09:50 PM

Chousing JS library for me all depends on the task.
If I need something fast and useful I use prototype.
If I need rapid layout development and nice interface I use YUI+YUI.Ext.
Adn finaly if I need great amont of features I use DOJO.
Afterall i think that YUI/YUI.ext is my choise..

Tobie Langel January 22, 2007 at 08:15 PM

I nearly switched from Prototype to jQuery about 6 months ago and had expressed some of my considerations on choosing a library back then. Instead of switching I helped writing Prototype’s documentation. There wasn’t a lot of rationale in making that decision at the time, except that there were a couple of really nice guys involved in the library.

Retrospectively, I think I stayed with Prototype because I just loved it!

There are many factors involved in choosing a library, but in the end, I think it all boils down to the guts, which is probably why all those discussions involving libraries are so passionate.

And actually, when you take into consideration the time you are going to spend coding, going with the library for which you feel that little extra something doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. You’ll probably be a lot happier working and therefore a lot more efficient.

Regarding the existing libraries, I would tend to agree with Snook (i.e. jQuery and Motools are more orientated at enhancing websites, Dojo, Prototype and YUI at building web apps). However, most of these libraries cover relatively similar grounds (or have existing add-ons that cover the gaps), and implementing a missing feature in one of them probably wouldn’t take you that much time. Furthermore, since their licenses are very liberal, you could easily rip off a needed feature in one of them to complement another.

Tobie Langel January 23, 2007 at 07:09 PM

There’s a lot of forward momentum in Prototype right now with the release of v. 1.5 and the new website/blog/api (disclosure).

Despite the comment I posted earlier, I still think a pinch of rationale can sometimes be welcomed. In that aspect, numbers speak for themselves (and that’s before v. 1.5 and the api docs… but also before Mootools was launched). What this means to you:

• it’s easier to find a developer who knows the framework if the need arises,
• the framework is tested on a very large scale,
• it brings a sense of security about the framework’s future (you don’t really expect a library used by more than 40% of the surveyed developers to finish as abandonware in the near future – note that this does not imply at all that I think Mootools will!).

I really don’t know Mootools, so there is no way I can trustfully compare the two frameworks together. I’ve heard great things about it, but did not really have the chance to dig deeper.

Anyway, best of luck with your project which ever way you choose to go.

Tobie

P.S. Your email notification for new comments is a great feature by the way – keeps the discussion alive.

dysko January 23, 2007 at 11:01 PM

mootools is great lib… it’s my choice

Tom January 24, 2007 at 06:00 AM

I love mootools. I’m a big fan.
Yes, many of the libraries are based off larger frameworks. Prototype is the most famous/popular (I think) and has been around forever. BUT that doesn’t mean you need to stick with it. It’s quite easy to implement any of these libraries. Many of them are very well documented so you shouldn’t have a tough time. If you aren’t familiar with javascript, it’s not a big deal.

I don’t know exactly what your needs are but the best suggestion I can make is just try a few. You have it narrowed down now, try mootools and if you don’t like it, try something with prototype. jQuery is extremely powerful and just go to their site and look at all the demos, I find that list of demos and addons VERY useful actually. My blog uses jQuery.

Michael Hollauf January 30, 2007 at 10:51 AM

Hi Wolfgang,

As you know we’re using Prototype + scriptaculous in all our projects, and we know it fairly well. However, if I now started a new big project from scratch, I would probably opt for YUI as it has the most complete set of features and widgets, very good browser support and a strong development team behind it.

I think that the scriptaculous people have been resting on their laurels a bit too long and YUI has caught up big time. You should really take a good look at it, I know I will ;-)

Gilles vd Hoven February 01, 2007 at 12:19 AM

jQuery, I’ve worked with prototype 1.3 and 1.4 and the lack of documentation and size of the lib converted me to jQuery. Not long after i downloaded jQuery, i took the chance to become one of the many, many contributors. I’ve been a jQuery enthousiast for almost 1 year now.

Cassio February 04, 2007 at 11:49 AM

I use Mootools. It beggined as an effects library for Prototype, but evolved to a fully functional framework. It is mature and very compact, and trully object-oriented.

Jacob Fike February 09, 2007 at 06:44 AM

Personally, I have used Prototype quite a bit, but I also used the YUI library for a while. I have to say that both are good at what they do, but I find prototype to be easier to use. While YUI does have some more advanced features like dialogs and such, it doesn’t have the nice new stuff in prototype 1.5 like each(), next(), up(), down(), etc. which I find extremely useful.

Thanks to some of the comments on this thread, I have decided to look into mootools as it sounds like it could, at the very least, be a useful addition to prototype, filling in holes or adding new features.

Tyler February 15, 2007 at 06:07 AM

My company runs all of its time, contract, and client tracking off of a system that I developed, that uses Prototype. The greatest thing about this is that once I included the file, I never had to go mess with it at all. I just include it, and I can use it without ever having to worry about how its going to handle a certain request, or how slow a given function is. I recommend it.