Your choice of cross-browser JavaScript GUI

Question

UPDATE . The full description, updated as of February 2015, can be found here:

Alternatives to Ext JS

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Question 2008:

There are many great and not so great Javascript GUIs. I looked at some (only superficially). And I can’t remember any of them.

Scroll to the bottom of this question to find out what others are saying.

• Ext.js The obvious choice for many, as it is one of the most famous frameworks.
  Benefits: Looks awesome , large community, many extensions / plugins, GPL'ed
  Disadvanatges: The inability to use third-party extensions with a commercial license (and some of these extensions have killer functions)

• Backbase Relatively less known. A curious combination of XML and Javascript, reminiscent of XUL. However, this is already cross-browser. Benefits: Looks nice , very extensible, makes it easy to include some really neat stuff
  Disadvantages: prices are steep and tied to the processor (although they are available for use on two processors), forums are slow to respond (although commercial support is supposedly fast)

• qooxdoo is also very popular. Advantages: Please fill out Minuses: the code is very dirty (based on rumors)

• YUI Fill in the description
  Benefits: Well-organized code Minuses: many widgets still in beta

• Dojo Fill in the description
  Benefits: Incremental class loading
  Minuses: MIght feels bloated.

• jQuery UI
  Advantages: Widgets are independent of each other
  Disadvantages: there are very few widgets at an early stage of development A possible trend towards wider adoption: jQuery for sending with ASP.NET MVC

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What are you saying? What do you use and why? Which would you rather use and why? In any kind of project

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To update your input ...

See a great excellent comment from Sergey Ilyinsky, which very well explains what structure you should choose when you just want to attach your page, create an application with a rich interface (with several options, at least)

An interesting comment in another thread compares jQuery, Dojo, Prototype, Mootools, Sproutcore, and Cappuccino (the question has been deleted).

Answer 1

When considering a JavaScript library / structure to use, you must first define your goals. I used to separate all JavaScript libraries / frameworks into three categories according to their purpose and architecture:

• I want the pimp of my page with some really cool features. Go to the JavaScript library.

  • JQuery
  • ZenoUI
  • old: Prototype, Mootools

• I want to create an application with a rich interface. I like to define the user interface using JavaScript, and I do not mind using the user APIs of these libraries to encode my application logic. Go to the JavaScript post-library / pre-structure.

  • extjs
  • kendo
  • DHTMLX
  • Dojo
  • Yui
  • Qooxdoo
  • JQuery user interface
  • Bindows - Generates the exact appearance of Windows
  • Spry (raw, suffers a lot from memory leaks)

• I want to create an application with a rich interface. I like to define an interface in XML, and I would like to code my application logic with standard APIs and use other developer-based standard technologies. Go to the JavaScript frame.

  • Spoutcore
  • Backbase
  • Enough SDK

A more detailed comparison is given in the alternatives of ExtJS .

Answer 2

On the contrary, I find the qooxdoo syntax and code organization very clear. It is like swing or gtk. I also tried Dojo, without much success. My # 1 choice for RIA is qooxdoo. It is rich, coding friendly, free and well-documented.

My choice for any other (browser-based) JavaScript work is jQuery. Although other libraries (prototype, mochikit, etc.) are useful, jQuery is now an advertisement. The presence of an active (and large) community.

Answer 3

Many people at StackOverflow use jQuery, so the answers are likely to be biased in that direction. In addition, jQuery will ship with ASP.Net MVC, making it the natural choice for developers using the Microsoft platform.

Answer 4

The YUI code is well organized, well-commented, and easy to read. As with most of these projects, we can say that the engineers working for them have too much time on their hands.

In a large project, simple, readable code that is flat and easy to adapt is much more efficient than gee whizbang widgets. I can understand sweets for myself when necessary. JS debugging is quite complicated, without having to wade through smart code codes.

Answer 5

I can confidently say that jQuery has become the most popular javascript framework in recent times (check out the 4th slide of this jQuery '08 Presentation Status ).

My company uses mootools , which I like, seems very similar to the prototype, and jQuery (which I haven't used yet) the interface elements are also pretty neat.

Answer 6

Dojo pros are IMO as follows: 1. Provides simple DOM query functions such as jQuery, ex:

dojo.query (". disableAble"). style ("backgroundColor", "gray"),

2. Have a really smart bootloader that can pull all classes at once, gradually, or of your choice. Also correlates with the build system, where you select your menu and compress, inline, et.c.

3. In my opinion, the most important thing; A complete hierarchical widget system on the client side, which is super simple to expand, with support for templates on the client side DTL It forces you to modulate your code and uses Dojo's own build and load system for custom widgets.

4. Almost everything that people write for Dojo becomes part of the “official” build in the dojox (experimental) folder. Many other toolboxes have many options for the same widget, making it difficult for users to choose the right one.

Cheers, PS http://unclescript.blogspot.com

Answer 7

Dojo CON, IMHO - terrible state of documentation. Most of them are outdated, they often say that the functions do not work, which have since been fixed, because you cannot warn you that the functions do not work.

I need to use it in the real world, study when I fly, and this is really a nightmare.

Answer 8

Rialto (Rich Internet Application Toolkit) is an ajax-based javascript widget library. Since this is technological agnostics, it can be encapsulated in JSP, JSF, .NET, Python, or the graphical components of PHP. Rialto's goal is to facilitate access to the development of rich Internet applications for corporate developers. Ideally, Rialto developers do not need to write or understand DHTML, Ajax, or DOM codes.

The goal of Rialto is corporate web applications, not internet sites.