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Open Source AJAX toolkits

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.

2 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. A better review (w/ actual code samples) by jbellis · · Score: 5, Informative
  2. 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.