Most efficient javascript/AJAX toolkit?

Question

What is the most efficient Javascript/AJAX toolkit?

Answer 1

jQuery seems pretty popular at the moment, and is lightweight.

• http://jquery.com/

Their API is well constructed and designed, and the resulting code tends to be very concise.

Some may find it TOO concise - matter of taste. On larger projects I sometimes end up using YUI - it's a lot more heavyweight, but for a large codebase I find it easier to read something a little more explicit.

• http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/

Really, it's a bit of a subjective question; most efficient will depend on what makes the most sense to your coding style, what you're trying to do, and what you're interacting with.

Best of luck!

Answer 2

"Most efficient" is hard to judge, but I have used Prototype and Mootools, both of which were simple to pick up.

Answer 3

According to this comparison, jQuery does reasonably well. Certainly better than Prototype. Personally I like the fluent interface model and brevity of jQuery as well.

Answer 4

Dojo Toolkit isn't too bad either, customizable, themeable etc.

EDIT: and in the link to the comparison Cletus posted, it works on every platform tested and is also the fastest.

Answer 5

We use Mootools here at work, it's very nice and lightweight. As for efficiency, who can tell?

Answer 6

Depending on what you have to do using AJAX, you may look at jQuery or ExtJs (http://www.extjs.com)

As already said in the previous answers, jQuery is very efficient and lightweight and should do the trick for almost everything you need.

If you need very rich UIs ExtJs has very nice features and a very complete API, but is quite heavier from what I could experience.

Answer 7

It really depends on what environment, framework and what goal you are trying to achieve...

Actually the best answer is: learn more than one... there is no silver bullet.

At the time I chose one, MooTools was the most performant, now a days performance differences are very limited.

I use the following rule for myself (I code a lot in ASP.NET) if there is a control out of the box in ASP.NET ajax use that one. If I need to write custom stuff I use Mootools. (you can also do this in asp.net ajax, but I personally perceived that I write better and faster code in Mootools)

One other thing to consider: jquery plays nice with asp.net ajax (=you can use both on the same page) while Mootools can not (it's a design decission which makes mootools a bit more performant). In my opinion if you need to use more than one framework on the same page, you are creating a lot of unnecessary overhead.

I know that I only considered Mootools and jquery while there are a lot of other frameworks out there (Yui which is heavely namespaced = more verbose = why I don't like it :) ), but most of the others (Dojo kit, ...) try to abstract away the javascript nature of javascript... which I try not to.

Some usefull links:

Clientside has a nice write up why he chose Mootools (while working at CNET)

and a followup where he reevaluates it..

Another comparison page.

Answer 8

It really comes down to a matter of preference and, to a lesser degree, what platform your on. Looking at just the client side implementation, I'm a huge fan of jQuery since I like the concise syntax it offers. I work with Prototype, YUI, and Mootools as well on different projects but still prefer jQuery.

Depending on your platform, there are other possibilities. For example, if you are using .Net, AJAXPro and the Microsoft AJAX offers some very quick and easy ways to add a full AJAX infrastructure to your solution. I'm not a fan of MS AJAX but I can't argue some of the quick and dirty tricks that can be done with it.

Answer 9

Prototype has some great Ajax support, and plenty of clear examples to help you along.

Answer 10

Choose the library that makes the most sense to you idiomatically.

The differences in efficiency are going to become less and less important as two things happen.

1. Browsers are getting much better at interpreting Javascript.
2. Most major Javascript libraries are planning to adopt a single selector engine, Sizzle

Answer 11

For general javascript development I use Jquery, for AJAX I use Xajax with PHP which is fantastic.

Answer 12

I find that even with all the different AJAX toolkits out there, it's still easier for me to write the AJAX by hand. Writing AJAX calls is fairly straight-forward and you don't have to deal with fighting things going on in the background due to some abstraction code.

Answer 13

I love JQuery. Love it. Want to mate with it. And I hate everything. Don't get me started about anything. I hate it. But I love JQuery.

The power and functionality are spectacular.

It's well-designed and easy to use.

The docs are complete, accurate, detailed, clearly-written, and current. Every function is explained with code samples and a working example.

There is a good collection of plugins.

There is also the JQuery UI library which provides a whole other layer of functionality -- drag-and-drop, modal dialogs, various controls, etc.

I've been using JQuery for years and it has never let me down. I truly can't say that about any other library/language/tool/computer thing that I've used a lot. JQuery is amazing.

Answer 14

Thanks for ur answers... i could now say that Jquery, EXT are advantageous. i'm still checking YUI and Xajax. thanks!:)

i agree. Dojo is difficult. i tried it, and find a hard time with the results.

Answer 15

You could also try scriptaculous which uses the prototype library

http://script.aculo.us/

Answer 16

There is a (pretty) TaskSpeed benchmark that you can take for each browser at http://dante.dojotoolkit.org/taskspeed/

The results are collated to http://dante.dojotoolkit.org/taskspeed/report/charts.html