Hi Joao,
I find it interesting as well. Scriptaculous is the "killer app" that makes Prototype even more appealing, and as far as I know, Scriptaculous is the leader in stability and features as far as FX libraries go. :-)
Its definitely the most well known effects lib and thats because they've capitalized on the Prototype's "first to market" position. It does have some nice features.
jQuery is doing good, though. jQuery has many strong points to it as well. The core of jQuery is very good and provides plenty of features. Where I think jQuery lacks support is in super-ultra optimization which might be required sometimes. And while the core can be optimized, the plugins are another matter as well. The lack of performance can be exacerbated as everything is "chained". :-)
Hmm. I'm not quite convinced on this argument. The performance issues aren't due to lack of optimization. The core team has really tweaked every aspect. As I mentioned during the selector test suite thread, the biggest roadblock to improving selector speeds is file size. That's being looked at as I type and we're looking at all alternatives to improving DOM selector speeds. That's really the only area that I've heard mentioned in terms of performance and only when these test suites are published. Since I monitor the lists daily, I'm in tune with a lot of the problem areas and I haven't seen anyone mention jQuery as a slow performer.
In terms of the plugins, that's really up to the individual plugin authors to evaluate and tweak. If you look at several of the plugins written by jQuery team members, they're very optimized and suffer no performance issues. Again, its based on specific experience levels and some folks will produce better code.
Ultimately, jQuery doesn't have a "killer" application like Scriptaculous, and I think that to create something like Scriptaculous requires a break of culture as far as "chain-only" solutions go in jQuery.
We have Interface but in terms of brand recognition, Scriptaculous definitely has the edge. Feature for feature, Interface provides the same functionality as Scriptaculous and there are things in the works to improve a lot of the functionality.
Also, you keep mentioning "chain-only" and I guess I'm having a hard time understanding that comment, especially when Prototype and Moo followed jQuery and now offer chaining as a well promoted feature. Chaining is a huge reason why people have chosen jQuery and why other libraries followed suit. Where do you see chaining as a performance issue? If you have specific examples, I would love to see them so I can pass it along to the core group and have them work on that.
I could put some blame in the emphasis on file size which is cultivated in the jQuery community as well, as the code of plugins can be slightly more painful to digest.
I hear ya but we do want to empower the community to build the things that they explicitly want while we maintain a solid foundation for them to build upon. Again, its an approach taken by almost every major lib and its been fairly successful to date across all projects.
That said, I am still trying to find something better than jQuery, as other alternatives try to hard to go in the other direction though (bloat, worse community support, slower development cycles, worse code all around).
Well, jQuery makes a very compelling case for itself and the team is working on making it better. I think you can go with the "grass is greener on the other side" approach and constantly be searching or you could settle into enhancing jQuery, which you seem to like, and contribute code, plugins and demos to the effort. Its not always about looking for the something better. Sometimes, its about making something thats already good even better. :)
Doesn't anyone have the definitive approach to JavaScript programming? :-)
Good luck on that! LOL! Rey...
