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Open Source AJAX toolkits

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the AJAX-al-icious dept.

twofish writes "InfoWorld columnist Peter Wayner recently reviewed six of the most popular "open source" Ajax toolkits. The article sets out to see if they are enterprise ready in comparison to commercial products such Backbase, JackBe, and Tibco's General Interface. The six open source projects covered were selected because each has a high-profile in the developer community and support of one or more stable organizations. " The toolkits covered are:
  1. Dojo
  2. Google Web Toolkit
  3. Microsoft Atlas
  4. Open Rico and Prototype
  5. Yahoo AJAX Library
  6. Zimbra Kabuki AJAX Toolkit


Whilst the definition of open source is broad, the round-up is quite helpful.

8 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. DWR by kevin_conaway · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you're doing Java/J2EE work, you should really have a look at DWR

    It makes it disgustingly simple to expose pretty much anything as AJAX calls

  2. I've just implemented my first AJAX site... by Toreo+asesino · · Score: 4, Informative

    Using Atlas for asp.net (http://atlas.asp.net/). Fantastic framework; unbelievably simple.

    I took a normal asp.net form I built for an ordering-page (lot's of postbacks for updating various basket options, etc, etc), wrapped it in an atlas XML container (all of 10 seconds work), and Bob became my uncle - the entire thing was AJAX enabled, doing lightweight postbacks & updates instead instead of the usual full-page postbacks you normally get with asp.net page-events.

    And all the JS is cross-platform too - IE, FF, Safari, etc (allthough, sadly, no Opera support just yet).

    And the best thing is, for all you JavaScript haters is turning off JS in the browser just meant the page automatically reverted to full-blown postbacks instead; thus not limiting accesibility.

    Oh, and I understand you can link php into Atlas too, but I'm guessing there's other stuff out there for php aswell.

    --
    throw new NoSignatureException();
  3. Re:Java != Javascript by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Who wants to code Javascript when you can use Swing?

    Google did not write a Swing API for JavaScript. That would be incredibly complicated and not worth their time. As you can see here, only some classes in the java.util and java.lang packages are supported, and some of them do not have identical APIs due to the differences between Java and JavaScript. The user interface can be written using GWT's components.

  4. A better review (w/ actual code samples) by jbellis · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.sitepoint.com/article/javascript-librar y

    --
    Carnage Blender : Meet interesting people. Kill them.

  5. Just did this myself by slindseyusa · · Score: 5, Informative

    I just went through and evaluated most of these myself in the past week because of a new work project. Dojo is by far the best when looking at building a real web "application". The others have limitations (such as Google's toolkit which requires you to write your code in Java) or are focused too much on "flashy" stuff. Dojo provides dialog boxes, windows, an editor, and more. It still has bugs and is an early version, so you need to consider your audience and time frame. For example, I had a problem with FF 1.0.7 (even though they say it is supported) but I only need to support FF 1.5 and Safari 2. I'm building a complex web app for an internal audience and I can guarantee they'll have one of these 2 browsers. Still, it seems to have broader support than some of the others toolkits. While I'm jsut starting with it, I've been happy so far. There's little documentation but the examples are good enough to get you started.

  6. Echo2 is good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    What about Echo2 http://www.nextapp.com/platform/echo2/echo/ ?

  7. Yahoo YUI Toolkit by DeionXxX · · Score: 4, Informative

    Personally I think the Yahoo YUI Toolkit is the best framework out there. It is commented very well, it is 100% cross browser compatible (they test on Opera, Firefox, Netscape, IE etc). It is fully supported by a team of engineers. They provide several versions of each script, so you can build your site with the -debug script, move to the normal script, and then when putting it on a live server, you include the minimzed script which is much smaller.

  8. Qooxdoo by valamaldoran · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've tried Dojo and the Prototype derivatives - Moofx, Rico and Scriptaculous. I don't really like Dojo because it seems so basic. Moofx is pretty good for lightweight effects, and the weight factor for effects goes up with Rico and even more with Scriptaculous. Bad thing about Prototype based scripts is that it doesn't play well with others due to Prototype's large manipulation of core objects. Enter QOOXDOO. Qooxdoo surprised me with how advanced it was. And its free. It is definately the script anyone needs to build a complex user interface for any application, because its designed to look just like an application. Its documentation is sparse, but the development community is amazing. they respond very quickly, and are working hard to fill the gaps on the documentation. The latest version is a vast improvement. The examples are very diverse, showing all the possibilities this remarkable script can do. if you really want to see an advanced framework that looks incredibly awesome, check out Qooxdoo...http://www.qooxdoo.org