Prototype VS jQuery

Question

Hi All guys!

First of, thank's for your time;

then i want go directly to the point by saying that, i don't want to open another "Yet Another Js VS Js" 3d , the web is almost busy of this!

I want also make a premise, i have used both theese js frameworks and i love it and i know, that there are a lot of good js frameworks around, maybe better then this two;

but, as you know we need to be perfomant and quickly by doing our works, so i want keep this two, that are the most famous and therefore have a great community support!

now, if you are going to say me, that the choise depends on what i'm going to do!?

then i can think, hey, in the end they are both javascript and they have almost the same methods and functions and for achieve a task they needs almost the same lines of code!

• So i want hear from you guys, from you that have really used one of theese, for a real Rich Internet Application what are the real points of force and what the weaknesses you find!?

Regards.

Answer 1

I chose jQuery over Prototype because:

• the "do more, write less..."
• the jQuery community is bigger (hence, more plugins and resources)

Answer 2

Neither is the "best". It's all depends. Try them both and see which one you like more. I personally use JQuery due to ease-of-use over prototype which is rather advanced and has longer learning curve.

Have a look at:

Prototype vs JQuery (at Ajaxian)

Answer 3

I initially liked the idea of Prototype's extending elements with new or modified methods.

However, I've discovered a number of reasons this is a bad thing (TM)

Do some googling and you'll probably find some other reasons, but the primary reason is that Prototype cannot be guaranteed to "play nice" with other frameworks or libraries, as other libraries expect the behaviour of elements and methods to be "standard", and due to the things Prototype does, you may find a number of things that are broken by it.

The most recent example I discovered was Prototype screwing with JSON and stringify. I was using EasyXDM, and it simply did not work in some cases where the prototype.js library was loaded. As I was writing a framework to be used by others, and thus did not have control over the content of the page, I needed to create and do everything in an IFRAME in order to ensure things such as prototype.js did not play havoc with what I was trying to do.

...so jQuery wins hands-down for me, because I just don't think its right for a framework to automatically screw with the standard behaviour of the DOM and javascript. YOU should be in control of these things, Prototype takes some of this control away from you....

Answer 4

I use jQuery over prototype as well, just look at the top of this page for why:

jquery tagged questions : 24838
prototype tagged question : 867

jQuery is very terse, concise code, prototype I find much more verbose, tough often equivalent in many areas for functionality. However if you need help getting started, you want the larger community. More support, more of the same questions you'll have already out there answered and easy to google, and more plug-ins, code you're probably looking for to do something...already written.

For the same reasons, the larger the community, the more code, the more complex code, meaning that the simple stuff has been written and many complicated situations solved as well, chances are if you're writing a very rich application you're going to run into some pretty complicated questions or situations...there are more resources out there to help you handle this.

Again...for the same community size reason, more deficiencies in the framework have been found and the gaps filled, because a larger community was scrutinizing it. This means that when you come across a problem, chances are someone else did too, and some method or option was added to keep you moving, not jammed up because you hit something the framework couldn't do.

Answer 5

This is another interesting article about jQuery and MooTools (MooTools and Prototype are mostly interchangeable, at least within the context of this debate) : http://jqueryvsmootools.com/

Answer 6

I'm currently rewriting large blocks off an application to move from prototype to jquery. Why? Plugins, plugins, plugins, particularly UI widgets. Prototype UI elements are rather fragmented and very piecemeal, while jquery has a very rich set of "standard" elements.