Simon Willison's Weblog: prototype-js

What's wrong with extending the DOM

2010-04-11T22:03:39+00:00

Detailed explanation of the problems that crop up from extending built-in DOM objects using JavaScript, from Prototype developer kangax. Prototype 2.0 will be dropping this technique entirely—will MooTools follow suit?

Tags: javascript, kangax, monkeypatching, mootools, prototype-js

Google AJAX Libraries API

2008-05-27T17:56:47+00:00

Google AJAX Libraries API

Google are hosting copies of jQuery, Prototype, mooTools and Dojo on their CDN, with a promise to permanently host different versions and an optional JavaScript API to dynamically load the most recent version of a library. I wish they’d stop capitalising Ajax though.

Via Ajaxian

Tags: ajax, cdn, dojo, google, jquery, libraries, mootools, prototype-js

getElementsByClassName pre Prototype 1.6

2008-03-26T08:28:05+00:00

getElementsByClassName pre Prototype 1.6

Older releases of Prototype break in Firefox 3 and Safari 3.1 due to unsafe namespace management—getElementsByClassName is now a browser built-in but with different semantics to the Prototype method of the same name. Prototype 1.6 is fine.

Tags: firefox3, getelementsbyclassname, javascript, john-resig, namespaces, prototype-js, safari

querySelector and querySelectorAll

2008-02-08T11:21:03+00:00

querySelector and querySelectorAll

WebKit now supports the W3C Selectors API. Expect the various JavaScript libraries to add this as an optimisation to achieve massive speedups (Prototype are already working on it).

Tags: javascript, libraries, prototype-js, queryselector, safari, selectors, w3c, webkit

Low Pro For jQuery?

2008-02-03T22:16:04+00:00

Low Pro For jQuery?

Dan Webb on why he prefers Prototype over jQuery: “The one big reason was that, while jQuery was super simple and concise when working on smaller projects, it offered no help in structuring larger applications”.

Tags: dan-webb, javascript, jquery, libraries, lowpro, prototype-js

Pseudo-custom events in Prototype 1.6

2007-11-09T23:02:54+00:00

Pseudo-custom events in Prototype 1.6

Useful tutorial showing how to use Prototype 1.6’s custom events to implement a cross-browser mouse wheel event.

Tags: andrew-dupont, customevents, javascript, mousewheel, prototype-js

Upgrading to Prototype 1.6: real world examples

2007-10-24T19:19:44+00:00

Upgrading to Prototype 1.6: real world examples

I still don’t find Prototype as intuitive as jQuery, but the API improvements between 1.5 and 1.6 are very impressive.

Tags: javascript, jquery, libraries, prototype-js, radiantcms

Prototype 1.6.0 release candidate

2007-08-16T08:49:54+00:00

Prototype 1.6.0 release candidate

Prototype gets a long-needed update to its Event API, and some interesting new Function.prototype extensions.

Tags: events, javascript, prototype-js

Building Brickslayer

2007-07-22T21:28:23+00:00

Building Brickslayer

New tutorial from Michal Wallace on building games in JavaScript using Prototype.

Tags: brickslayer, javascript, michal-wallace, prototype-js, tutorial

Low Pro Behaviours 101

2007-07-17T10:09:03+00:00

Low Pro Behaviours 101

A neatly packaged method of enhancing an existing DOM element with pre-packaged behaviours.

Tags: behaviours, dan-webb, dom, javascript, lowpro, prototype-js

Quoting Tom Occhino

2007-07-08T07:29:16+00:00

MooTools is not compatible with any other javascript framework. If you "definitely need to work with prototype" (which you don't, since the frameworks each provide all the functionality you need to use only one or the other) then learn how to do what you want to do in prototype. Otherwise, learn to use MooTools to do all the things you want to do. They simply do not work together, and I promise they never will.

— Tom Occhino

Tags: javascript, libraries, mootools, prototype-js

Packing Prototype

2007-05-17T09:52:08+00:00

Packing Prototype

Why Prototype doesn’t ship with an official compressed version.

Tags: compression, javascript, javascript-libraries, packing, prototype-js

Ext JS

2007-04-03T22:11:57+00:00

Ext JS

Jack Slocum is building a business around his excellent Ext JavaScript library (which can now run on top of YUI, jQuery or Prototype). The library itself is LGPL, but you can pay for a commercial license and support.

Tags: jack-slocum, javascript, jquery, prototype-js, yui, yuiext

Fork JavaScript

2007-01-20T23:39:39+00:00

Fork JavaScript

A great name for Yet Another JavaScript Library. This one tries to combine the best bits from YUI and Prototype.

Tags: forkjavascript, javascript, prototype-js, yui

Speeding up Prototype's Selector

2006-06-28T19:16:33+00:00

Speeding up Prototype's Selector

Really smart getElementsBySelector optimisations.

Tags: javascript, prototype-js

Notes on JavaScript Libraries

2006-06-26T15:03:00+00:00

@media 2006 was a blast. Great talks, great people and some of the highest production values I've ever seen at a conference (check out the bags!).

I sat on the JavaScript Libraries: Friend or Foe? panel, with PPK, Dan Webb, Stuart Langridge and Cameron Adams chairing. It was my first participation in a panel and I really enjoyed it - I've always liked the Q&A bit of giving talks. JavaScript Libraries are an enormous topic but I felt we did them justice considering the time available. For the record, here are the key points that I wanted to get across:

Large JavaScript applications need some kind of library - even if it's one built especially for that application. There are a number of problems in JavaScript (most of them originating with browser incompatibilities) that any moderately complex application will need to deal with - things like normalised event handling, DOM node selection, sane animation or drag and drop. Solve these problems once so you can get on to the interesting task of building the application. If you can find a library that solves them for you so much the better!
The big four. Dojo, MochiKit, Prototype/Scriptaculous and the Yahoo! UI Library are the top of the pile as far as I'm concerned. They cover the bases effectively and each one offers something interesting that makes it worth studying in its own right. If you plan to evaluate some existing libraries these make an excellent starting point.
Leaky abstractions. Joel Spolsky's essay The Law of Leaky Abstractions is my favourite of all of his online articles. It's basic tenet is that abstractions that are designed to save the programmer time inevitably leak, and if they leak at a lower level of abstraction than the programmer is familiar with they prove almost impossible to debug. Paradoxically, the more time saving abstractions you are using the more you actually have to know.

JavaScript is possibly the leakiest abstraction of them all, thanks to the many different browser environments it runs in. If you rely on a library to abstract away the browser bugs from you you are certain to run in to a bug that you can't fix sooner or later. Don't use libraries as crutches; if you're not prepared to figure out what the library is doing for you you'll end up in a world of pain further down the line.
Community and documentation matter. As with all open-source software, it's a good idea to get a feel for the amount of community activity around a project before you commit to building on it. The big four all have active communities, which means less bugs, more support and a faster rate of improvement. Likewise, good documentation is invaluable.
Libraries should play well with others. Reusable code that excludes other code from being reused has severely limited long-term value. In JavaScript, that means that libraries that mess with Object.prototype or pollute global namespaces should be treated with caution. The Prototype library was a major culprit here, but thankfully has cleaned up its act (at least with regards to altering Object.prototype) in recent releases. It's all very well saying that you'll always be using code built with your core language modifications in mind, but you may well change your tune when you try to incorporate Yahoo! or Google Maps and everything breaks.
Go with the grain. If you take the time to learn it properly, JavaScript is a powerful and surprisingly elegant language. Good JavaScript code takes advantage of its dynamic, functional nature. Libraries that promise to take the pain out of JavaScript by writing the code for you probably aren't as smart as they seem. Abstractions leak.

Dan Webb has a good comparison of the big four on SitePoint, although he did overlook YUI's Animation library which I consider a highlight.

For more accurate coverage of the @media panel itself, take a look at my co-worker Paul Hammond's detailed notes.

Tags: atmedia, dojo, javascript, libraries, mochikit, prototype-js, speaking, my-talks, yui

Painless JavaScript Using Prototype

2006-02-22T08:53:26+00:00

Painless JavaScript Using Prototype

The missing manual, by Dan Webb.

Tags: dan-webb, javascript, prototype-js

Using prototype.js v1.3.1

2005-10-14T14:16:27+00:00

Using prototype.js v1.3.1

Prototype: the missing manual.

Via Survey of AJAX/JavaScript Libraries

Tags: javascript, prototype-js

Object.prototype is verboten

2005-07-05T11:53:14+00:00

Object.prototype is verboten

This is a problem with the popular Prototype library.

Tags: javascript, prototype-js