AJAX Toolkit - AJAX Framework

Question

What's the difference between toolkits and frameworks? Do you know a good comparison?

Answer 1

The names say it all really, a toolkit is a set of tools that you can use however you wish. A framework is an empty frame that you can fill in to form your application. The line between them is blurry though a framework contains tools, and a toolkit sometimes forces you to perform actions in a specific sequence.

I wouldn't know of a generic comparison, i guess it depends on the toolkits and frameworks themselves.

Answer 2

If I had to make a distinction, then I'd say a toolkit provides specific tools to do specific jobs, whereas a framework provides you with a foundation on which to build further, higher-level structures.

Tools are useful on their own, frameworks have no innate function.

Answer 3

Not Specific to AJAX though. But a have a read..

What is the difference between a framework and a library?

Answer 4

A toolkit provides the basic, minimum building blocks for building something. A framework already has an approach laid for your. A framework defines the application architecture for you (most of the times), where a toolkit only gives you the tools, so you define your own architecture.

For example, GWT(Google Web Tookit) is a toolkit; it does not impose a certain way of doing things, the Java JDK is also a toolkit (Java Developer's Kit), but Rails (from Ruby on Rails) is a framework. It encourages the use of their worflow and classes (MVC, share-nothing, etc).

Answer 5

A toolkit is like a library. You pull it into your application and you use it. A framework provides a structure to your application, so all of your code goes inside of it. The strength of a framework is that by following it's conventions and staying inside of its process it is capable of doing a lot of heavy lifting for you. A toolkit is more flexible, but there are many types of problems that are better solved by a framework. With Ajax, it is a little harder to define. For example, simple widgets and dom manipulation can be done in a toolkit style, but if all of your javascript uses special event wrappers and framework based class functionality and inheritence, all of your code becomes dependent on that framework and is really contained inside of it.

Answer 6

jQuery, prototype, Yahoo! User Interface, MooTools, dojo, and ExtJS will have you working with very solid code. Other posibilities that I can't vouch for myself: QooxDoo

I believe he's looking for a comparison of the javascript libraries/toolkits(whatever they happen to call themselves).