Recently we have been looking at integrating some AJAX functionality into some applications we have and are wondering if anyone has experience with any of the popular libraries.

Some we have looked at are

http://prototype.conio.net/
http://openrico.org/rico/home.page which uses prototype

Any input would be great!

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NEWEDGE Services, Inc. - Developers of ClientExec

I dont think I can help much since I have never heard of this function before but after a read into it. I got a good article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX

One of the pros and cons it tels is that on somethings you cant press the back button because the data is made dynamically without reloading the page and search engines wont be able to pick up the dynamic data. Offcourese people need to have javascript running.
But still looks like it can be some time and bandwidth saver for the client.
I hope someone can give you more useful info than I did.

Hey Al! Good question... I too was looking for the same thing recently and ran into Rico, Sajax, JPSpan (Harry Feucks project) and a few others... but those three seem to be the most popular...

From what I've seen I believe Sajax seems to be the most mature project - with JPSpan following right behind. I still haven't had the chance to use any of the three - so I can't say for sure - but I spent hours going over all three of those... here's some links:

http://www.modernmethod.com/sajax/ ( Sajax )

http://jpspan.sourceforge.net/ ( JPSpan )

and it looks like you have Rico... Definately check out those two though - there's alot to think about but I think the three mentioned are the best!

Thanks, I will take a look at jpspan. I had missed that one in my searches.

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NEWEDGE Services, Inc. - Developers of ClientExec

i might be going out of topic, but i have heard, search engines have problems crawling these pages, as they are refreshed with javascript and search engines dont execute javascript as yet.

is that true? willl it have any impact on a website ranking or so??

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Like I said before this was one of the small problems faced.
This is from Googles website
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
"Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site."

So google might find it hard to crawl the site and depending on how much info it cant access then it might drop your ranking as maybe it cant see the links that you might have put there.

Also as you say the pages are refreshed with javascript which means when the user wants to go back a step he/she might automatically press the back button on their browser but that will back them into the last page that was loaded which may even cause them to exit the site completely. So unless you have a good navagation system enableing the user to go back without using the back buttons then that may be no worry.

And the chances of someone haveing javascript disabled/not installed are really small so I wouldnt worry about that.

Well mainly I've seen AJAX used on sites that require some type of login from a user. Search engines won't even be able to make use of it anyways if that's the case. I can only think of a few reasons I'd use it without a user system.

Google always has problems with all kinds of different technologies... they use AJAX as well and pretty much made it what it is with their Maps...

I've had a site with a Flash header and Flash ads on the side that got crawled more than a popular blog a friend of mine had... it all depends on alot of things I suppose... I won't worry about AJAX and Google for some projects - or else those projects would never come to life... MSN, Yahoo, etc will still crawl the sites... just make sure you submit to DMOZ.org and you'll get plenty of extra hits :)

Yes it's true but the golden rule would be to build pages using php and add gadgets that use ajax on the pages. Indexing most gadgets would be useless for search engines.

I've got experience with 3 libraries. script.aculo.us (prototype based), sajax and jquery. I'm a little partial to jquery but the all suck equally. I'm not a great javascript guy so when I do ajax stuff I look for pre-built then I just massage it in place. This stuff is quite powerful though, and users really like the right ajax solution.

A couple of effects ... (If this type linking is not allowed just remove it, not trying to spam here).
1. drag & drop to save ordered lists to a database without submitting (menu in middle) (script.aculo.us)
2. sliding bars that update to db (trust factor, top right) (sajax)
3. (mac-ish) docked fisheye menu (top menu) (jquery)

i personaly use mootools.. but prototype is also realy good!

Nothing beats Prototype in all honesty :) !

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The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out.

I don't use a library I do it all by hand :D

lol cherries, then I would suggest you seriously reconsider using them. Libraries (or frameworks) provide a consistent approach to common problems, usually through collaboration of many experts in that particular field. Admitidly you can't beat the satisfaction of wrtiting everything by hand, but the time to do so just isn't practicle for me.

However, with that said, for PHP I have found myself writing my own library (well, my team has) rather than using one of the already available PHP frameworks out there. There's no real excuse for this besides the fact that we want full understanding of the framework, and it can be a real pain understanding the fundtamentals of someone elses code, espcially when the code contains thousands upon thousands of lines. Even so, it would still be quicker to learn someone else's framework than to build our own.

I'm with Karl, frameworks are there to be utilised. Why bother writing something entirely from scratch (even if it only takes 10 minutes) when a simple $('myform').send('result') (for example) would do the trick?

If you don't like the current libraries and/or frameworks out there, then that's your choice but don't put down the fantastic work being done in this field just because something doesn't float your boat or to pretend to yourself that not using these things makes you a better programmer (I'm not accusing anyone).

They're great tools, use them. :)

i agree totally, especially the "pretend to yourself that not using these things makes you a better programmer" part, i have had friends of mine question why i use libraries and everytime i have to explain that i really cant be bothered reproducing the code, then debugging it only to find out that it doesnt work on IE, so then u have to work out some fix, if you use a lib then the hardworks been done for you, all of them are cross browser compatible and you can get on with more important things. Time = Money

Personal preference atm is jQuery, i just prefer it to prototype its seems less oafish, but they are both equally good.

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Empty set (0.00 sec)

To beat a dying horse, I agree, frameworks are there for the betterment of all, and if you don't like one you should just move on to another. Or, if you like one but wish it did a couple things differently, or if it had a feature, add to it. Contribute.

I've said it before, everyone gets all huffy puffy over frameworks.

My personal favorite of all time is the xLib from www.cross-browser.com (though the site doesnt seem to be working)

I've also done work with scriptacolous and prototype, jQuery, Dojo, and Yahoo's UI toolkit, all of them are fun to learn and use.
I think the easiest thing to do, when trying to learn a new JS library, is to run through the demos and examples, and go "Yes! that's what i want!" and then go from there, since there's an example of what you want, and how to do it, you can use that as a base, and learn at the same time.

But yes, a lot of the frameworks are alike, they may do some things a little different, but in the end, they save you a crap load of time..

So, my rankings:

1. XLib
2. YUI
3. Prototype
4. Scriptacolous (uses prototype)
5. JQuery
6. Dojo
7. Moo.FX (it uses prototype as well)

XLib

I've never been at all keen on Moo.FX and MooTools - always seemed like badly put together JS frameworks, to me. Although I may be entirely wrong here - merely my observations from having to work with them on clients' projects.

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The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out.

I've never been fond of it. But hey, some people swear by it. First thing i think of is that they find it easier to use it because it's what they know, but yeah, as far as the most popular JS Libraries, I think Moo.FX had a small burst of excitement, and kind of died down, as other reliable JS Libraries continued to gain followings.

Agreed! Scriptalicious sticks to nice standards in its coding, whereas Moo.FX has the attitude that if it works this way then why bloody change it.

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The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out.

Always used mootools, maybe I should start using a wider range?

Any suggestions would be great.