What do you want to use the library for? Selecting DOM Elements DOM Manipulation Simplifying Events Simplifying Ajax Mimicking classical inheritance Extending native objects with 'missing' capabilities Cool Widgets
>From what I can tell, these are the main areas of focus of all the major javascript libraries. jQuery excels at Selecting DOM elements, DOM manipulation, Simplifying events, and simplifying ajax. It has decent classical inheritance support via plugins. It has a few javascript object/array enhancement capabilities but does not add them to the native objects. jQuery UI has many cool widgets. If you really want missing javascript object/array methods then Prototype is a good option, but jQuery is as good or better at everything else. Prototype also has Class support in its core and some neat effects in Scriptaculous. If you want a full blown classical inheritance coding strategy, mootools excels at this. It also provides a ton of missing object/ array methods, but it more wordy then jQuery and doesn't provide the shortcuts that jQuery does by default. Mootools prides itself on its extendability and can be extended to provide these shortcuts if you want. I've taken part in all of the communities surrounding these three libraries, and jQuery has by far the most friendly and helpful community. Check out the number of members on this list vs. the Prototype/Scriptaculous list. Prototype developers are a silent lot, popping up now and again to say something, but for the most part are quiet. John Resig, the creator of jQuery, is usually quite active on the boards but I suspect has gone into a bit of seclusion lately to finish up his next book. Mootools community is the least helpful, and is sometimes outright hostile. The mootools library developers are all very quiet and don't come out into the spotlight often, but Aaron Newton has taken up being the public face of mootools. He recently wrote an article on jQuery vs Mootools with a somewhat mootoolish bias, but its a great article: http://jqueryvsmootools.com/ On May 21, 12:39 pm, kiusau <kiu...@mac.com> wrote: > On May 21, 12:23 pm, David Meiser <dmei...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > If you can't bear that thought, just *choose* one. None of my friends were > > using jQuery when I started using it (now I've converted all of them), but I > > read an article saying that it was going to be included in ASP.NET MVC and > > VS 2010. So, I gave it a shot, liked it, so I continue using it. > > I am not sure that it makes a difference, but I am a dedicated Mac > user. > > One other important issue that I forgot to mention is that for the > moment I have no server-side capability, but will eventually move away > from my client-side only constraint. > > Roddy
