Matt Snider JavaScript Resource

I was just sitting down to write an article about the differences between the Event handlers of Prototype versus YUI, and many of the other Frameworks, when I stumbled upon the new release candidate (version 1.6) of Prototype. I have to say that I am surprised and impressed. A lot I planned to discuss has changed and it seemed more appropriate to highlight the important changes found in the next release.

http://www.prototypejs.org/2007/8/15/prototype-1-6-0-release-candidate

Here are the improvements that jump right out at me:

• Events have been overhauled so you no longer need to use the ‘bindAsEventListener’ Function to scope DOM Nodes or other Objects, instead scope can be passed in the observation declaration
• Custom Event - one of the most powerful Framework utilities is now available in Prototype
• More use of closures to create inheritance instead of Object hashes
• Semantic Sugar - most return objects are now wrapped with relevant Prototype Functions
• Commitment pledge support to JavaScript Web Standards

I believe with this new release the Prototype team is making a big step forward with their framework. My only concern is that they are still attaching methods to the Object and Array pseudo types. Otherwise, they have done an excellent job on refactoring the Framework. I will provide a link to the download when the official version rolls out.

I stumbled upon this article today, while researching techniques for capturing the back button in JavaScript. This article highlights the features of 5 top-tier JavaScript frameworks:

1. YUI
2. Prototype
3. Rico
4. Qooxdoo
5. Dojo

Justin, says Top 5, but doesn’t say what criteria he measured them by. Ignoring his ranking, these are 5 powerful Frameworks (although Rico is really an extension of the Prototype Framework). And I had not taken a look at Qooxdoo before:

Top 5 javascript frameworks

I saw this post on one of my favorite blogs, Agile Ajax. Despite the title, it is not an analysis of jQuery versus Prototype but a discussion of the OOP design of the two Frameworks. I like Brian’s analogy of Prototype being JavaScript with training wheels and other Frameworks like programming without training wheels. Using Prototype has a tendency to make coders lazy, attaching everything to the ‘this’ operating and using event and function binding all over the place, when it is not really necessary or efficient. The Module Pattern is the most efficient pattern I have used and Brian Dillard discusses this as well at the end of his article. Enjoy:

jQuery vs. Prototype: OO JavaScript with or without training wheels

Jack Slocum, author of YAHOO.Ext, has recently launched http://extjs.com/. Initially, I thought the site was a remake of his personal site http://jackslocum.com/ with a greater focus on his YUI extension library. However, upon closer inspection, I realized the new website is dedicated also to framework interoperability. And since that is one of the main goals of this blog, I felt it worth mentioning. Anyway, Ext already works with jQuery, Prototype, and Scriptaculous.

Note: Ext is now also works standalone, without any other library. Although, I am impressed with the work this team has put into Ext, it is still to heavy for most websites. Using this Framework, it is very easy to create JavaScript libraries of 300k or more.