JavaScript Libraries: The Big Picture
I just gave my first talk at XTech 2007 (I’m speaking again on Friday, on OpenID). Slides are on slideshare.net.
Update: Some important corrections have been posted in the comments.
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Somewhat surprised MochiKit didn't make the cut. Is adoption of MochiKit that much lower than dojo or jquery?
@derek - Almost completely so. MochiKit hasn't had a release in over a year and the developers are encouraging other users to take control, or use other libraries.
So far, I've found Google trends to be one of the better indicators of the popularity for JavaScript libraries. You can actually see MochiKit's popularity waning.
If we include Mootools, we can see that it's had a big increase in popularity (Coming in third after jQuery and Prototype).
Obviously, statistics are open to interpretation; but I don't find any of the signs relating to MochiKit to be very positive. (That's not to say that it isn't an awesome set of code; in many ways, it is. It just appears as if its time has passed.)
Wonderful presentation, thanks Simon!
BTW, I guess you were wrong about minification (slide 47) - Prototype doesn't ship in compressed format for reasons stated here - http://www.andrewdupont.net/2007/02/26/packing-pro totype/
I think mootools deserves more attention than it gets. It handles the same problem's that Prototype and Scrip.aculo.us tackle, but with a much much much much smaller file size.
It's used throughout CNET, so it's not exactly unused.
Good presentation. And when ExtJS grows beyond the 'lib adapter' stage ? ExtJS made me "learn" Javascript. Can't say the same about other libs... Jquery makes it too easy... i love it :)
Miguel Benevides - 17th May 2007 03:18 - #
You mentioned Dijit, which is the new widget package in Dojo 0.9, but somehow missed dojo.query(), which was added several months ago: http://dojotoolkit.org/node/336 --- it plays a prominent role in Dojo 0.9 implementation.
Eugene Lazutkin - 17th May 2007 03:39 - #
I gave a similar talk to this a year ago which covered MochiKit instead of jQuery, but there hasn't been a MochiKit release in over a year while jQuery adoption has been sky rocketing. I'd have liked to mention it anyway but there's only so much you can cover in 45 minutes.
Sam: I considered including mootools, but again I was restricting myself to four.
Eugene: I hunted around for a selector implementation in Dojo but somehow missed dojo.query - I've posted a correction to my blogmarks.
Great slides. Thanks for sharing.
Great presentation.
I've been playing with jQuery a bit recently so it's nice to see how it compares to it's peers.
Thanks Simon.
I use MochiKit all the time. I think it's a shame that it hasn't gotten more support. It's easily the most functional of all the libraries out there. It's lightweight, and well test; it doesn't need a release every two seconds. I must say that is a very poor judgment of its health.
Also as to John Resig's post above, Bob Ippolito is not "encouraging other users to take control, or use other libraries." Read the posts you linked to, he was merely offering alternatives to the specific user based on their needs.
Brantley Harris - 23rd May 2007 20:41 - #
About the Google trends example: be careful with that, because the name jQuery might be not uncommon enough (there is an Eclipse plugin with the same name)
polaar - 23rd May 2007 22:14 - #
Nice presentation.
I have one critic though: how can anyone take Dojo seriously?
I mean, this is the worst piece of Java anyone has ever written ... in JavaScript.
First and foremost Dojo tries hard to emulate a traditionnal GUI API, which is exactly what you *don't* want to do in a browser, certainly not if the design is inspired by AWT or Swing.
Second, the library is a multimegabyte monster full of bugs, the typical product of j-propelled egg-head who love to spend 99% of their time fighting with an over-sophisticated framework instead of applying a good API.
Laurent Szyster - 24th May 2007 09:51 - #
Laurent,
With the current state of dojo's documentation, I definitely understand your first impression and frustration.
However, I would encourage you to dig a little deeper into dojo - it is truly the only Javascript framework that was built from the ground up with continuous integration mind.
As well, the event system is without peer (includes less-commonly used but EXTREMELY helpful AOP techniques) and their modular build strategy is the only one that scales moving forward.
Geoff
Geoff Moller - 24th May 2007 19:21 - #
@Brantley: Release rate is an excellent indicator of open source project health. It takes a significant amount of energy, planning, and coordination to pull one off. Currently, I find that Dojo, Yahoo UI, Prototype, and jQuery execute releases the best (with Dojo being the best at it, followed closely by YUI, ending with Prototype and jQuery being about equivalent.)
@polaar: That's not even, remotely, a concern. The old "JQuery" Eclipse plugin was active from 2002-2004 and when I launched the jQuery JavaScript Library in Jan. 2006 there were 10,000 results for the word on Google. Now there's 6.2 million. Assuming that the "JQuery" Eclipse plugin was just as popular as it was 3 years ago, that would only be 1/10th of 1% of all traffic for the word jQuery. I'd, personally, be more concerned about "Dojo" in relation to actual Dojos and "Prototype" in relation to the JavaScript language itself.
Awesome presentation. I shall share it in my blog with your permission.
Ritesh - 25th May 2007 11:19 - #
@John Resig: You may be right. I just mentioned it because, for me, Google displayed non-jQuery-Javascript-library links on the first page for the word "jQuery" (wouldn't even have thought about it if it were not for that). Anyway, it was not my intention to downplay jQuery's success, just to suggest to be careful with these results. (by the way: extra search terms were provided for Dojo and Prototype, not for jQuery, Mochikit and Yahoo ui)
polaar - 28th May 2007 19:35 - #
think mootools deserves more attention than it gets. It handles the same problem's that Prototype and Scrip.aculo.us tackle, but with a much much much much smaller file size.
翻译公司 - 5th September 2007 05:19 - #
That's not even, remotely, a concern. The old "JQuery" Eclipse plugin was active from 2002-2004 and when I launched the jQuery JavaScript Library in Jan. 2006 there were 10,000 results for the word on Google. Now there's 6.2 million.
北京翻译公司 - 5th September 2007 05:20 - #
What can I take from this JavaScript Library?
tmaxim - 25th September 2007 08:52 - #
So far, I've found Google trends to be one of the better indicators of the popularity for JavaScript libraries. You can actually see MochiKit's popularity waning.
If we include Mootools, we can see that it's had a big increase in popularity (Coming in third after jQuery and Prototype).
Obviously, statistics are open to interpretation; but I don't find any of the signs relating to MochiKit to be very positive. (That's not to say that it isn't an awesome set of code; in many ways, it is. It just appears as if its time has passed.)
Proflogistics - 7th November 2007 11:27 - #
Am running a collaborative comparison of the various libraries at http://mytechrantings.blogspot.com/2007/11/compari ng-prot ...
Expecting everyone valuable inputs :D
Rohit Rai - 16th November 2007 04:43 - #
To Rohit Rai:
Very interesting site with many libraries. Thx.
Proflogistics - 4th December 2007 08:56 - #
Good presentation
vip porno star - 14th December 2007 21:46 - #
Javascript libraries are the devils work. Don't use them
LocalHero - 2nd March 2008 13:03 - #
A very interesting article with many libraries.
Big Thanks
Holzspielzeug TIMBaER - 27th April 2008 23:59 - #
Cool Libraries.
Thanks.
Udo - 6th May 2008 15:41 - #