Does Prototype have a future?

[Diodeus]

While I am strong advocate of Prototype and Script.aculo.us, I find
that the vast majority of discussion/coverage on the web is focussed
on jQuery. I understand that there are not huge differences in the
capabilities of these two libraries, so why has jQuery gained such
popularity vs Prototype?

This really hit home since I've been following questions/discussions
on stackoverflow.com. Prototype is virtually invisible there. I know
this isn't a "library war" and that the two can cheerfully coexist,
and that there is plenty of room in the marketplace for everyone. A
few years from now, where will we be? jQuery seems to be gaining
momentum.

Will there be a resurgence in the popularity of Prototype, or will it
fade off into obscurity? (I certainly hope not)

Here's the post I read today:

- - -
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/139723/which-javascript-framework-is-the-simplest-and-most-powerful
- - -
Question: Which Javascript Framework is the simplest and most
powerful?
- - -

I propose jQuery.

I'll give you some of the major arguments from the presentation that
my team put on yesterday for senior management to convince them of
that.

Reasons:

1.

Community acceptance. Look at this graph. It shows searches for
"prototype", "yui" and "scriptaculous" growing from 2004 to 2008. Then
out of nowhere in 2006 searches fro "jquery" shoot up to double the
number of the other libraries. The community is actually converging on
a single leading product, and it's jQuery.
2.

jQuery is very very succinct and readable. I conducted an
experiment in which I took existing code (selected at random) written
in YUI, and tried re-writing it in jQuery. It was 1/4 as long in
jQuery. That makes it 4 times as easy to write, and 4 times as easy to
maintain.
3.

jQuery integrates well with the rest of the web world. The use
of CSS syntax as the key for selecting items is a brilliant trick
which helps to meld together the highly diseparate worlds of HTML, CSS
and JavaScript.
4.

Documentation: jQuery has excellent documentation, with clear
specifications and working examples of every method. It has excellent
books (I recommend "jQuery in Action".) The only competitor which
matches it is YUI.
5.

Active user community: the Google group which is the main
community discussion forum for Prototype has nearly 1000 members. The
Google group for jQuery has 10 times as many members. And my personal
experience is that the community tends to be helpful.
6.

Easy learning curve. jQuery is easy to learn, even for people
with experience as a designer, but no experience in coding.
7.

Performance. Check out this, which is published by mootools. It
compares the speed of different frameworks. jQuery is not always the
VERY fastest, but it is quite good on every test.
8.

Plays well with others: jQuery's noConflict mode and the core
library's small size help it to work well in environments that are
already using other libraries.
9.

Designed to make JavaScript usable. Looping is a pain in
JavaScript; jQuery works with set objects you almost never need to
write the loop. JavaScript's greatest strength is that functions are
first-class objects; jQuery makes extensive use of this feature.
10.

Plug-ins. jQuery is designed to make it easy to write plugins.
And there is an enormous community of people out there writing
plugins. Anything you want is probably out there. Check out things
like this or this for visual examples.

I hope you find this convincing!
- - -

[Justin Perkins]

I like Prototype better than any other framework :p

-justin

[Nick Stakenburg]

I'm not sure if Prototype has a real future, at the moment it seems to
be getting more and more a side project for it's authors. The reason
jQuery is so popular is it's community, it's certainly not those
points in your article since those are true for most frameworks.
People who write those articles look at it from one framework and are
often not even familiar with other frameworks.

What would help is if Prototype focussed more on the community, things
like scripteka.com need to be intergrated into prototypejs.org .
People tend to go with jQuery because all they want is plugins, jQuery
has them right there on the main page, while for prototype hardly
anyone knows how to find a plugin so the choice for the average guy to
pick a framework then becomes very easy.

Perhaps 1.6.1 will breath some new life into things, or maybe not.

--
Nick

On 26 sep, 16:52, Diodeus <diod...@gmail.com> wrote:
> While I am strong advocate of Prototype and Script.aculo.us, I find
> that the vast majority of discussion/coverage on the web is focussed
> on jQuery. I understand that there are not huge differences in the
> capabilities of these two libraries, so why has jQuery gained such
> popularity vs Prototype?
>
> This really hit home since I've been following questions/discussions
> on stackoverflow.com. Prototype is virtually invisible there. I know
> this isn't a "library war" and that the two can cheerfully coexist,
> and that there is plenty of room in the marketplace for everyone. A
> few years from now, where will we be? jQuery seems to be gaining
> momentum.
>
> Will there be a resurgence in the popularity of Prototype, or will it
> fade off into obscurity? (I certainly hope not)
>
> Here's the post I read today:
>

> - - -http://stackoverflow.com/questions/139723/which-javascript-framework-...

[bluezehn]

What prototype desperately needs is a better community than a group on
google! I mean, there are much better interfaces for communities, and
there's an irony there that prototype is supposed to be promoting the
better use of interfaces... Also merging prototype and scriptaculous
into one project I believe would be beneficial. I understand the
distinction but it's just confusing for new users.

I love coding on prototype - I think it's fantastic - but if it's not
going to be supported/developed on in the future, then I'll have no
choice but to start again with jquery.

[Diodeus]

One this that I always thought strange is why it is called "Prototype"
-- it makes it seem like it's half-built and experimental, rather than
a usable product. While I understand the OO reference, I'm sure many
don't.

Perhaps the suggestion of merging the two is a valid one (even if they
continue to be two separate pieces). Perhaps all of this would benefit
from a re-branding and a better community-based web site where people
can post more code samples, tutorials and such.

[Gregory Seidman]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 11:52:47AM -0700, Diodeus wrote:
> One this that I always thought strange is why it is called "Prototype"
> -- it makes it seem like it's half-built and experimental, rather than
> a usable product. While I understand the OO reference, I'm sure many
> don't.
>
> Perhaps the suggestion of merging the two is a valid one (even if they
> continue to be two separate pieces). Perhaps all of this would benefit
> from a re-branding and a better community-based web site where people
> can post more code samples, tutorials and such.

I dislike jQuery. I have criteria for what I consider a useful JS library.
Essentially all of them have reasonable DOM manipulation and easy animation
and things like that. Some have good reusable controls/widgets/behaviors.
But jQuery leaves you high and dry when you need to do things that are not
directly related to the DOM. If I need to retrieve a fragment of HTML via
AJAX and plop it into the page somewhere, I can do that with anything. If I
need to process a JSON response from the AJAX request to generate several
dynamic views based on the state of various form controls, however, it gets
a lot messier in ways that Prototype makes clean. If I have state to
maintain that doesn't live in the DOM, it takes more work with jQuery than
Prototype. Once you go beyond the DOM, jQuery is no longer your friend.

Because jQuery is so geared toward making it easy to manipulate the DOM,
however, it is easier for non-programmers to use and like. There are
discussions where I work about standardizing on jQuery because our HTML/CSS
guys can work with it more easily. Of course, when they need to do
something more complicated they will call on us, the programmers, and we'll
have to work in that part of the problem space where jQuery is no help at
all.

At some point, in my copious free time (ha!), I would like to learn jQuery
and Prototype at the source level (i.e. beyond using them as libraries) and
see how much work it is to build something that gives me the best of both
worlds. I suspect it will be much easier to add jQuery's convenience to
Prototype than Prototype's language niceties to jQuery, but it's a worthy
experiment. At that point, I might be in a position to build something that
really is the best of both worlds.

--Greg

[Miguel Beltran R.]

Hi, I a new user from Prototype (2 weaks so far)

I am begin to look diferents libraries: prototype, jquery, mootools, etc.
After some time I decide to use prototype because I feel what have
better documentation for beginer (can be better) like me. I just only
use AJAX. I am doing a application web (before use VB6) so no need
effects or maybe later.

My 2 cents.

ps. Sorry for my english ;)

2008/9/26 Diodeus <dio...@gmail.com>:

--
________________________________________
Lo bueno de vivir un dia mas
es saber que nos queda un dia menos de vida

[Andrew Dupont]

On Sep 26, 10:30 am, Nick Stakenburg <nickstakenb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure if Prototype has a real future, at the moment it seems to
> be getting more and more a side project for it's authors. The reason
> jQuery is so popular is it's community

The last few months have been unusual for Prototype Core: most of us
have been especially busy in our day jobs. Prototype has always been a
side project, but then most open source projects are; JQuery is in the
enviable position of having its full-time development fully funded
(Paul Bakaus's employer pays him to work on jQuery).

> What would help is if Prototype focussed more on the community, things
> like scripteka.com need to be intergrated into prototypejs.org .
> People tend to go with jQuery because all they want is plugins, jQuery
> has them right there on the main page, while for prototype hardly
> anyone knows how to find a plugin so the choice for the average guy to
> pick a framework then becomes very easy.

In truth, I'd agree with most of the suggestions on how we could
improve our community. We're not lacking in initiative; we're lacking
in time, and if anyone reading this considers himself/herself good at
managing mailing lists, evangelizing, organizing documentation, and
the like, we'd love to have your help.

In other words, Prototype won't be like MochiKit, which languished
because its author lost interest. We just need to find more people
that are (a) willing to help out in ways that don't involve writing
code; and (b) able to get stuff done. We've got plenty of A, but not
much of B, mostly because the people who want to help out are often
just as busy as we are.

> Perhaps 1.6.1 will breath some new life into things, or maybe not.

Nick, I take your opinion very seriously, and it unsettles me to know
you're this pessimistic about the future of Prototype. It means we
haven't been doing our jobs well lately. We're going to push out
1.6.0.3 as soon as we can and then start focusing on 1.6.1 (which I
guarantee will have some stuff you'll love).

Cheers,
Andrew

[Hector Virgen]

I like Prototype because it takes all the work out of Javascript. I've been using it for a few years now but as a PHP developer I usually only used it for Ajax. Only recently have I started to get acquainted with all of its other components, and it is a pleasure to work with. Just last night, for fun, I decided to build a rater just like the one on livepipe.net. I didn't look at their code so that I could really learn how to do it on my own and it only took me a few hours to finish it.

Here's the code and examples:

http://www.virgentech.com/code/ratable

While JQuery may be fast for someone who knows it, I believe Prototype can be just as fast as long as you know it. I use CSS selectors ($$() and Element.select()) when appropriate, and you're right that it makes things much easier. I'm glad Prototype supports it :)

I'm not sure if I agree with all of your points, Diodeus, only because they mostly all also apply to Prototype, too. In other words, I'm not convinced that JQuery will make things any easier for me than Prototype has.

Although JQuery is popular, what is popular is not always best (*cough* Windows *cough*). It really just comes down to what works for you and what you feel comfortable with, and right now I am very comfortable with Prototype.

-Hector

[Nick Stakenburg]

Andrew, great to hear 1.6.0.3 is coming soon, I'm sure 1.6.1 is going
to be great. There are great ideas floating around for it, although I
hope that by the time 1.6.1 is released it won't be seen as Prototype
playing catch-up. Maybe that's unavoidable though with funded
frameworks around the corner.

I just hope the website will get an update as well so it doesn't hold
people back while the code is only getting better. The code is not
what worries me, it's the community not paying enough attention. As
far as I'm concerned getting the community involved is the area where
other frameworks are outcompeting Prototype at the moment. Looking at
job openings these days it saddens me to see people having settled on
some other framework before they even have a Javascript guy on board,
there you have some competition between frameworks Prototype could end
up stronger in. I'm not that great on things that don't involve code
but I'll be looking forward to contributing wherever I can.

Regards,
Nick

[jason maina]

Though a newbie to prototype working with is not a problem once i
understood the concept the methods of intrest at this point. One point
to note, prototype examples available are mostly rubyonrails based
jQuery on the other hand is php biased. Watched a friend of mine work
with Yui & before he got what he wanted took him a whole day coz what
he wanted was not provided for in the framework so we ended up
introducing prototype into the project the was so happy he started
over the project with proto only.
In short prototype needs more examples in other languages not just
ruby though ruby have prototype as part of the application
jason

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

[Blaze]

I've been using Prototype and script.aculo.us for long time now and I
must say they are indeed great libraries.
I can't image getting any work done without them. Encountering this
discusson made me check out the
jQuery thingie and I must say I'm not impressed. On my oppinion it's
not even easier to use then Prototype
for general use. I can't really imagine how could it be any simpler
for DOM use.

But what jQuery has, is a lot of plugins, and of course community that
helps it to be as popular as it is.
I think Prototype will not be forgotten, but we should make a proper
development community, especially
for the script.aculo.us which I think has a lot of hidden potential,
so I'm developing a very nice functionality
that I'm quite sure will find it's way in into the main library
someday. It will be ready quite soon so expect
to see it here.

On Sep 27, 8:58 am, "jason maina" <jason.ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Though a newbie to prototype working with is not a problem once i
> understood the concept the methods of intrest at this point. One point
> to note, prototype examples available are mostly rubyonrails based
> jQuery on the other hand is php biased. Watched a friend of mine work
> with Yui & before he got what he wanted took him a whole day coz what
> he wanted was not provided for in the framework so we ended up
> introducing prototype into the project the was so happy he started
> over the project with proto only.
> In short prototype needs more examples in other languages not just
> ruby though ruby have prototype as part of the application
> jason
>

[buda]

jQuery is for simple manipulations for beginner or for the simple
projects which doesnt require class inheritence manipulations, work
with enumarations, events and etc which is a core of Prototype.js

Prototype.js is very useful and well thought-out library for advanced
programmers and complicated projects!

On 26 сент, 17:52, Diodeus <diod...@gmail.com> wrote:
> While I am strong advocate of Prototype and Script.aculo.us, I find
> that the vast majority of discussion/coverage on the web is focussed
> on jQuery. I understand that there are not huge differences in the
> capabilities of these two libraries, so why has jQuery gained such
> popularity vs Prototype?
>
> This really hit home since I've been following questions/discussions
> on stackoverflow.com. Prototype is virtually invisible there. I know
> this isn't a "library war" and that the two can cheerfully coexist,
> and that there is plenty of room in the marketplace for everyone. A
> few years from now, where will we be? jQuery seems to be gaining
> momentum.
>
> Will there be a resurgence in the popularity of Prototype, or will it
> fade off into obscurity? (I certainly hope not)
>
> Here's the post I read today:
>

> - - -http://stackoverflow.com/questions/139723/which-javascript-framework-...

[Karel Minarik]

> jQuery is for simple manipulations for beginner or for the simple

> projects (...) Prototype.js is very useful and well thought-out library for advanced programmers and complicated projects!

Very well put! It also answers the "why everyone is discussing jQuery
and not Prototype?" question quite eloquently.

Another point of view: for *anyone* loving Ruby's syntax (probably
doing Rails development), Prototype's syntatic enhancements are
nearing nirvana state of mind. I cannot imagine I would be able to
pull anything without `each`, `invoke`, `gsub`, etc. Not to mention
`Class.create` and doing "normal" and "sane" OOP programming of GUI. I
wouldn't touch JavaScript without Prototype.

My *big thanks* to Prototype developers. Keep the great work, please!

Karel

[T.J. Crowder]

> The code is not
> what worries me, it's the community not paying enough attention. As
> far as I'm concerned getting the community involved is the area where
> other frameworks are outcompeting Prototype at the moment.

I'll second that. And more and more I think it's up to us in the
community to solve it, not the Core team. This discussion group is a
good example of what happens when we in the community take the lead:
The old group[1] wasn't getting moderated and started filling up with
spam, so we took charge and created this new one -- with the blessing
of, and help from, members of Core (in particular Tobie and Andrew).
We handle the day-to-day running of it. Although Core members are on
the list of moderators and they do read this group, the vast majority
of moderation and content here comes from **us**, the users of the
frameworks.
[1] http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-spinoffs

In other words, this is a community group. Perhaps it's time we
created a community website as well. Something that said very clearly
that it was NOT an official site for the frameworks, but a community-
run site with unofficial -- but useful -- information.

I'm looking at wikidot.com and so far I'm liking what I'm seeing. We
could run a wiki (there, or elsewhere) where the opening page looked
something like this:
* * * *
This wiki is a set of **unofficial** documentation, how to pages, and
other discussion related to the Prototype and script.aculo.us
frameworks.

The official Prototype site is http://prototypejs.org
The official script.aculo.us site is http://script.aculo.us
The official end-users' discussion group for Prototype &
script.aculo.us is this Google group (linked to
http://groups.google.com/group/prototype-scriptaculous)

This site is not affiliated with the Prototype Core team or Thomas
Fuchs. They are not responsible for its content. **You** are. If you
use and benefit from Prototype or script.aculo.us, give back by
helping make the information provided here as accurate and complete as
possible.
* * * *

Something like that.

One of the things I'm liking about wikidot is that we can have pages
that have both locked content only moderators can edit and unlocked
content any member can edit -- in the same page. (I think most wikis
can do this one way or another.) So we could have a page for (say)
stopObserving with a moderated description plus community content, a
bit like this:

* * * *
Event.stopObserving
===================
Official documentation: http://prototypejs.org/api/event/stopObserving

Unofficial documentation
------------------------
Event.stopObserving(element, eventName, handler[, useCapture = false])

Unregisters an event handler. (etc. etc. etc.)

Community documentation
-----------------------
Click here to supplement the above.
* * * *

Currently, the official documentation for stopObserving is out of
date. It doesn't discuss the new features in 1.6.0+ and it references
the deprecated unloadCache function. If we had this wiki right now,
it would have the correct documentation in the moderated section plus
any additional material from the community following it. My initial
take on it is that we don't pre-moderate the community stuff at all,
anyone can join and edit. The moderators would remove inappropriate
content and sometimes fold the good stuff into the moderated parts.

The rest of the site could have not-moderated-in-advance pages for
tips, tricks, how tos, upcoming events, etc. We could host that
community-edited FAQ we've talked about a couple of times; the one
that kangax and I wrote a while back has never quite made it onto
prototypejs.org, because the Core guys have been too busy to do that.

Why have a two-tiered community site? Two main reasons: Vandalism,
and keeping on message about being unofficial. But if I'm out on a
limb there, we could try not having locked pages.

I'd be happy to be one of a team running and moderating such a thing
on some appropriate free service if people think it would be useful.
On spec, I've grabbed a useful name on wikidot (proto-
scripty.wikidot.com, but I've just got it closed off right now).
Anyone else thing it'd be good to have something like this? Anyone
else willing to help run it with me?
--
T.J. Crowder
tj / crowder software / com

[Michael Hauptmann]

Hi T.J.,

I'd love to help on creating such a community site.
I do not have very much spare time, but I'm nearly permanently connected and it would be no problem to help moderating.
I'm a heavy user of prototype and could also help with documentation, and even with creating a Spanish or German translation of it.
Specifically Spanish users would profit from having Spanish docs as there are still lots of people not understanding enough English to be able to use prototype/scriptaculous.

Miguel

[Blaze]

That definately is a good idea since such a website is seriously
needed if we want for prototype to prosper. I'm also willing to help
manage and develop such a site. Besides all the updated documentation
there should be properly explained workings of the scripts which
should also be accompanied by working examples when possible, because
that's what excites developers, especially beginers. Another thing
that I think would also be great to have on such a website would be
like projects in work. By that I mean that we should set to create
some new bigger functionality which would then be openly developed by
people. If we go in such a direction I think we can't fail. So yes,
lets push on with this and make something special.

> The official Prototype site ishttp://prototypejs.org
> The official script.aculo.us site ishttp://script.aculo.us

> The official end-users' discussion group for Prototype &

> script.aculo.us is this Google group (linked tohttp://groups.google.com/group/prototype-scriptaculous)

[lfortin]

On Sep 27, 5:45 am, buda <www...@pochta.ru> wrote:
> jQuery is for simple manipulations for beginner or for the simple
> projects which doesnt require class inheritence manipulations, work
> with enumarations, events and etc which is a core of Prototype.js
>
> Prototype.js is very useful and well thought-out library for advanced
> programmers and complicated projects!
>

I totally agree with that.

If you are a web designer or developer with little or no knowledge of
JavaScript, jQuery does a good job.

But, in my opinion, if you are doing more complex front-end
development and complete web applications with lots of OOP, Prototype
is simply the BEST JavaScript framework!

A big thanks to the core Prototype team for your work!

-Laurent

[Gregory Seidman]

And yet, this is a problem. Prototype should strive to be as good as jQuery
in terms of convenience for non-programmers. It isn't even difficult. A
good part of the simplicity of jQuery comes from the $() function returning
a "set" object that has a number of convenience methods for attaching event
handlers, hiding and showing, etc. to all of the returned elements. I
suspect that it would take very little to implement the same methods and
attach them to the array returned by Prototype's $$() function. I'm going
to work on it today.

> A big thanks to the core Prototype team for your work!
>
> -Laurent

--Greg

> >
>

[Andrew Dupont]

On Sep 27, 5:35 pm, Gregory Seidman <gsslist

+protoscri...@anthropohedron.net> wrote:
> And yet, this is a problem. Prototype should strive to be as good as jQuery
> in terms of convenience for non-programmers. It isn't even difficult. A
> good part of the simplicity of jQuery comes from the $() function returning
> a "set" object that has a number of convenience methods for attaching event
> handlers, hiding and showing, etc. to all of the returned elements. I
> suspect that it would take very little to implement the same methods and
> attach them to the array returned by Prototype's $$() function. I'm going
> to work on it today.

I agree that we should probably have a custom type for HTML result
sets, but I don't subscribe to the axiom that we should necessarily
appeal to non-programmers. Obviously we try to make things intuitive,
but our definition of "intuitive" tends to mean "fills in blanks in
the DOM API" or "behaves like it does in Ruby."

Part of why jQuery is so popular is that it's insular and internally
consistent, but intentionally doesn't aim to "blend in" like we do. So
it appeals to web designers who are just getting into browser-based JS
and don't have existing mental templates for how these things should
be structured.

In other words, I we should make Prototype as simple as possible given
the design choices we've made. But we shouldn't try to out-jQuery
jQuery.

Cheers,
Andrew

[Rey Bango]

I'd like to clarify something.

> side project, but then most open source projects are; JQuery is in the
> enviable position of having its full-time development fully funded
> (Paul Bakaus's employer pays him to work on jQuery).

This is incorrect. Paul Bakaus works fulltime on *jQuery UI*, the
effects & UI library which complements the jQuery JS lib. This is done
as part of his job and the jQuery UI library has flourished because of
his focus and dedication.

He does NOT work on the jQuery Core library and if he does contribute
to it, it's solely when it affects *jQuery UI*.

All jQuery & jQuery UI team members, apart from Paul, are volunteers
and all of us work hard to build the libraries, promote the projects
and support the growing community of jQuery developers.

Rey Bango
jQuery Project Team

[T.J. Crowder]

@Miguel & Blaze,

Thanks. I think the idea of translations is particularly
interesting. I'm totally snowed under right now and a lot of the
folks who might be interested are probably tied up with stuff related
to the Ajax Experience, but late next week I might put together a few
proof-of-concept pages and post a thread about it here. Don't want to
hijack Diodeus' thread.

[Nick Stakenburg]

An effort to focus on the community has to come from core itself but I
agree that we can do something from within the community. That’ll
probably only have limited effect since it won't reach as many users
being an unofficial effort. A revamp of the official site would give
the most benefit, a wiki alone has it's limitations.

I see the best possible community effort to be like a revamp of the
official site. Combining wiki, plugins, documentation, tutorials,
forums, mailing lists, blog etc. all into one site that focuses on
getting the community excited and involved besides just presenting the
framework. I'm willing to kick in time to create it, but I don't want
to rush into things when I don't know if it's a waste of my time. I'd
expect Prototype to go that way anyways eventually. I'll just throw
the idea on the table for now since I think it would help Prototype
more then a community wiki effort alone.

--
Nick

[Gregory Seidman]

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 09:49:13PM -0700, Andrew Dupont wrote:
> On Sep 27, 5:35?pm, Gregory Seidman <gsslist

Actually, I'm not sure it matters now. See here:

http://jquery.com/blog/2008/09/28/jquery-microsoft-nokia/

Looks to me like jQuery has gained enough momentum that my time is better
spent porting the Prototype functionality I want and need to jQuery. That
makes me really unhappy, but that's how it seems to have turned out.

> Cheers,
> Andrew
--Greg

[solidhex]

@Andrew Dupont - seems to me you have been fairly busy, after all,
you're book on this very topic came out not that long ago!

I am actually reading it right now and I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone
who's in to Prototype.



On Sep 28, 6:22 pm, Gregory Seidman <gsslist

[bluezehn]

Personally, an association between anything and microsoft makes me
less likely to want to use that bit of software/framework/library,
especially when it's associated with the horror that is ASP.net, but
then that's just a personal opinion ;-).

As long as I have assurances that Prototype will continue to be
developed I'm all over it like a fat kid is a cup cake. JQuery can
easily give you good javascript functionality on a page - but
prototype can very easily help you make a web page a web application
and for me that's where the internet's going.

So firstly I'd like to second solidhex in recommending Andrew Dupont's
book which is just absolutely fantastic.

Secondly I'd also like to offer my services to developing a better
prototype community. As T.J. points out, this isn't the thread for
that but when that appears I'll be all over that too.

On Sep 29, 2:22 am, Gregory Seidman <gsslist

[Karel Minarik]

> (...) Prototype should strive to be as good as jQuery

> in terms of convenience for non-programmers.

Could you elaborate on *why* Prototype should strive for that?

(Is the prime (sole?) reason the "popularity" of jQuery?)

Karel

[Gregory Seidman]

Popularity means ecosystem, and ecosystem means reusable chunks of code you
don't have to write at all. If it's easy for your HTML/CSS developers to 1)
find plugins, 2) integrate plugins, and 3) design DOM structures suited to
scripting, everything is easier.

In fact, anything that makes it easier for non-programmers, particularly
HTML/CSS developers, to accomplish things and work smoothly with
programmers is worthwhile. If you and your HTML/CSS developers can spend
less time stepping on each other's toes, you win. If your HTML/CSS
developers can accomplish more at a lower cost (since they are almost
always cheaper than a programmer), you win.

If your HTML/CSS developers have to hand off all client-side scripting to you
then you spend your (more) valuable time setting up scripting-friendly DOM
and writing simple stuff. It might be only a couple of lines with
proto/scripty, but it still takes time and effort that could be at a lower
billing rate, not to mention the usual costs of communication.

> Karel
--Greg

[jason maina]

I have no idea why we strive so hard looking for reasons why jQuery is better than Prototype whereas the truth is, when you came across the framework and it worked for you, you didn't bother looking for another as Prototype had already solved many of your problems.

Popularity notwithstanding should not be a gauge for how good a framework is, example *MS Windows* we all know about it we want to move away from it but somehow hooked on to it.

One thing that can be done is improve on existing strongholds of Prototype while making it more versatile with more plug-ins or add-ons whichever suits the scenario.From my stand point Prototype for life :-))

[darrinholst]

> Actually, I'm not sure it matters now. See here:
>
> http://jquery.com/blog/2008/09/28/jquery-microsoft-nokia/
>
> Looks to me like jQuery has gained enough momentum that my time is better
> spent porting the Prototype functionality I want and need to jQuery. That
> makes me really unhappy, but that's how it seems to have turned out.
>

I probably should just bite my tongue and stay out of this rat hole,
but c'mon. So jQuery wins because you'll have code completion in
Visual Studio when developing your ASP.NET applications or creating a
stocks widget for a phone???

If using jQuery makes you unhappy, then use whatever makes you happy.
You aren't going to wake up some morning and find Prototype
mysteriously missing. Prototype's roots are buried deep into Ruby and
Ruby on Rails which is what I like most about it...it gives me a taste
of the good life in my otherwise boring life as a Java programmer. And
just like Rail's take on things I don't think Prototype should strive
to be mainstream (or at least it shouldn't be it's #1 goal).
"Everyone" using something is certainly flattering, but there are some
negatives, just ask Microsoft about the perception of Windows.

My $.02,

Darrin

[bakermx]

Prototype just makes sense to me. I find that it is easier to read
than a jquery version of the same function.

[Diodeus]

I must say that I'm really quite pleased that there are so many
passionate responses to my original posting. It's good to see the
community stand up and be counted.

Getting a better community site is probably the best idea going. There
needs to be enhancements to the documentation, more code examples,
sample projects and the like. It seems there is a lot of community
support out there, it's just a matter of providing the right forum to
do so.

I've got a number of tricks and tips of my own, that I'd love to share
and I'm certainly willing to write for whatever forum comes along. I
think moving this Google group to its current form was an excellent
idea, and has greatly improved our ability to spread the word.

So let's move on to the next stage - let's get a Wiki or something set
up and get rolling from there.

[MikeFeltman]

One comment I'd like to make on momentum...

A Google search for prototype.js yields 3.24 million hits. A Google
search for Jquery.js .233 million hits. Based on this very scientific
bit of research my conclusion is that Prototype is more than 18 times
more popular than Jquery.

[Dan Dorman]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 4:43 PM, MikeFeltman <MikeF...@f1tech.com> wrote:
>
> One comment I'd like to make on momentum...
>
> A Google search for prototype.js yields 3.24 million hits. A Google
> search for Jquery.js .233 million hits.

Googlin' for "jquery" begets 7.73 million hits.

Dan

[Hector Virgen]

"prototype" yields 49.1 million hits, but that's not exactly fair...

[Kevin King]

I second the recommendation on the book. Excellent resource!