Which JavaScript library is recommended for neat UI effects?

Question

I need a JavaScript library that supports Ajax as well as help me in making simple and neat animation effects in a website I am working on.

Which library do you recommend?

Answer 1

I would definitely recommend JQuery as the easiest to use and the one which requires you to write the least code. http://jquery.com/

Answer 2

http://script.aculo.us/

I think it fits your 'neat animation effects' requirement.

Answer 3

I've been playing with Scriptaculous and jQuery. Both are good although I'm leaning more toward jQuery.

Answer 4

That's a pretty broad question, some of the top open source stacks are - YUI (Yahoo) - Prototype with Scriptaculuous - ExtJs - Dojo

It's a pretty personal choice based on code style, look and feel, and which one you prefer.

Answer 5

1. If you want to implement some basic animation jQuerry is ok.
2. Also personally I like the prototype.js
3. For more difficult thing we using some features of Microsoft AJAX client library

Cheers.

Answer 6

Take a look at Dojo/Dijit/Dojox (http://dojotoolkit.org). They have a lot of cool special effects, and a lot more that will come in handy to anyone working with Javascript.

They also keep docs and related articles at http://dojocampus.org/

Answer 7

I am a fan of YUI. It supports Animation and Ajax.

In addition, there is just a plethora of controls: menus, movable windows, tree controls, sliders, tabview, the list goes on and on. I have used their code and I've had a good cross-browser experience with it. Doesn't surprise me. They do extensive testing on the toolkit.

Answer 8

I like ExtJS a lot. It's a great library for developing complex interfaces with javascript.

Answer 9

Stack Overflow uses jQuery if that matters. Scriptaculous tries pretty hard to do everything that you can do in Flash. Dojo has an SVG abstraction that lets you do things that are not directly supported in JavaScript.

Answer 10

Personally, I'm a fan of MooTools' animation classes (Fx.Tween, Fx.Morph, Fx.Transitions). Very straight-forward and easy to use. For more advance animation Fx.Slide, Fx.Scroll and Fx.Elements are also available...

It also has a neat Ajax class (Request) that will take care of all your ajax needs.

Obviously though this is my personal opinion... Any of the big ones (Yahoo UI, jQuery, MooTools, Prototype etc...) will all be able to do both Ajax and Animation so I'd suggest looking at sample code from all those libraries and chose the one you like the most!

Answer 11

Spry has a lot of effects that seem to be relatively easy to use.

The downside (upside?) with Spry is its packaging. It's split into many separate pieces and parts.

So if you want to use a lot of Spry, you'll either be making several calls to external javascript files, or you'll be gluing them together on your own. Spry won't do it for you neatly (like YUI does).

However if you want to just use a single component or effect, Spry is very lightweight!