Feedback for Presentation from Designers Who Use MooTools

[Rey Bango]

Hi Everyone,

I received the green light from MooTools team member Tom Occhino to
post this here.

I'm going to be doing a preso at Future of Web Design on how to take
advantage of JavaScript libraries for your design. The actual name is:

"How to take advantage of jQuery and other JavaScript libraries for
your design"

Just so you'll know this was the name that Carsonified gave to the
topic and I'm trying to get broader coverage instead of it focusing on
jQuery solely. I plan on including MooTools, Prototype, YUI & Dojo
into this and I want to make sure they all get positive exposure in my
talk as well as accurate information.

So I'm reaching out to web developers, who originally had a strong
focus on the design aspect the web development process, and
subsequently embraced a JS library to help them improve their work.

Not being versed in MooTools, I'd like to post the following questions
to the MT Google group to ensure that I get the most accurate
information. I'm hoping I'll get plenty of feedback.

What I'd like to know is:

1) Which library (or libraries) did you choose?
2) What led you to use the library (libraries)?
3) How has it improved your work?
4) At which point in the site design & development process do you
consider using a JS library?
5) Which features of the specific libraries you selected to do you use
regularly?
6) Do you develop to strict HTML/XHTML standards? If so, has your
choice of library helped you to continue being standards-compliant or
has it hindered your work? If you could elaborate on pros and cons,
that would be a huge help.
7) Do you develop with progressive enhancement in mind? If so, do the
libraries you use help you with that?
8) In terms of CSS, do you find the libraries meeting your needs or
are there limitations that you're finding?
9) How do you leverage the JS libs to affect your use of CSS in your
web applications?
10) How quickly were you able to leverage the JS libs to help you in
your development?

The answers will help me better understand some of the pros and cons
of the various JS libs.

Also, if there are other areas that I should research, please don't
hesitate to mention it. Again, my goal is to help designers understand
how JS libs can help them and I'm looking at this from a library
agnostic perspective.

Rey...

[tr0y]

Hey Rey,

I fit your criteria pretty well. My background is in graphic design,
then html/css and most recently javascript.

> 1) Which library (or libraries) did you choose?
> 2) What led you to use the library (libraries)?

First, I started working with jquery because it was easy, but the code
started getting out of hand really fast and I foresaw it being
difficult to maintain. I was initially most impressed by mootools
v1.1, but was intimidated by it (even the simple examples seemed
beyond me). Finally, after playing with jquery enough to get my feet
wet, I switched back to mootools after 1.2 for the OO. I needed
something that would give me a way to keep things organized and
reusable and Ia didn't know enough at the time about the prototype
model on my own to take advantage of it.

> 3) How has it improved your work?

Integrating client side functionality used to be a huge pain (we have
a server side guy inhouse) and was basically depended on whether or
not we could find a plugin that did exactly what we needed and was
easy enough for me to use. Now, when we need something, we just build
it or modify it. Huge improvement :)

> 4) At which point in the site design & development process do you
> consider using a JS library?

UI design

> 5) Which features of the specific libraries you selected to do you use
> regularly?

All the html manipulation, the fx, the string and array methods, all
the style manipulation capabilities, and event handling probably make
up the bulk of it

> 6) Do you develop to strict HTML/XHTML standards? If so, has your
> choice of library helped you to continue being standards-compliant or
> has it hindered your work? If you could elaborate on pros and cons,
> that would be a huge help.

Generally we develop to the strict standards, but if there is a choice
and it seems reasonable, we will occasionally leave the standards
behind. The lib hasn't really had an effect on that for us.

> 7) Do you develop with progressive enhancement in mind? If so, do the
> libraries you use help you with that?

Having it all object oriented makes that muuuuch easier.

> 8) In terms of CSS, do you find the libraries meeting your needs or
> are there limitations that you're finding?

I think that the selectors in mootools could use more central
documentation. I find things scattered between the css standards, the
mootools docs, the blog, random articles, the book. Would love to see
something compiled/complete. But the answer is always there to be
found, so I haven't had too much trouble.

> 9) How do you leverage the JS libs to affect your use of CSS in your
> web applications?

I try to keep them separate whenever possible. I try to only use css
in the js when its not feasible to call a class or just not worth it
(like setting display: none)

> 10) How quickly were you able to leverage the JS libs to help you in
> your development?

Very quickly, tho the learning curve with mootools is def a little
steeper/

>
> The answers will help me better understand some of the pros and cons
> of the various JS libs.
>
> Also, if there are other areas that I should research, please don't
> hesitate to mention it. Again, my goal is to help designers understand
> how JS libs can help them and I'm looking at this from a library
> agnostic perspective.
>
> Rey...

Hope this is what you were looking for,
Troy

[csuwldcat]

1. I use the mootools Core and More (pretty much all of it) and other
plugins from Arron @ clientside, as wellas various others across the
web.
2. I did the prototype thing for a second and found this to be more my
style, pretty easy and the code looks most native to the other libs
that I have looked into/also used.
3. Cannot begin to think of the efficiency and productivity increases
that using Moo have enabled
4. I use it as I start getting the base HTML done and I get results
and data on the page (sometimes that happens ajaxically of course
though)
5. $ and $$ as well as a crap load of position, array, string,
element, selector, and last but not least Fx objects.
6. I do standards stuff where I can but not seeing the W3C check mark
because of one style or div is not my concern, results baby, results!
7. No. Sorry IE6 (or IESux). The app(s) our company is building are
not for tin foil hat JS haters or the crap browser users (IE7 yes but,
nothing lower). Just a fact of life, won't code for the lowest common
denominator, it just propagates them further.
8. I would like to see all libs do native event delegation (Moo has it
coded in the 1.3 as you can see in Lighthouse),
9. I rarely use js to set css except when using the color More plugin
or a few other cases.
10. I learned HTML and Mootools in the same month and now can do most
everything to build a site sans the heavy lifting needed from the
backend code, but then again I am a business person not a coder, so I
digress ;)

[Iván N Paz]

Hi Rey

> 1) Which library (or libraries) did you choose?

Mootools mainly, right now Im checking out all others, but have no
intention to switch, just extend mootools so far as I can....

> 2) What led you to use the library (libraries)?

I started with mootools since the days of Moo.FX + Prototype... Most
of my work is joomla based, and since moo is included there by
default... I got the best of both worlds there!!!

Besides this, I started my developer carreer using C++, and so, the
object oriented outlook is great for me...

> 3) How has it improved your work?

Very, Very much... I still cant compare to others besides the opinions
of other users respecting other frameworks. The way I can
unobtrusively modify/alter/extend xhtml is priceless...

> 4) At which point in the site design & development process do you
> consider using a JS library?

Right after all xhtml/css coding is done (Im lying... from the start!!!!)

> 5) Which features of the specific libraries you selected to do you use
> regularly?

DOM altering, animation, XHR

> 6) Do you develop to strict HTML/XHTML standards? If so, has your
> choice of library helped you to continue being standards-compliant or
> has it hindered your work? If you could elaborate on pros and cons,
> that would be a huge help.

I try to do so.

This mainly relates to the quality of the code generated by the
plugins. With the mootools core, I have no complaints. There are some
plugins around that do not do the best work, but can easily be
extended.

> 7) Do you develop with progressive enhancement in mind? If so, do the
> libraries you use help you with that?

I dont get the grasp of this question... sorry (english is not my mother tongue)

> 8) In terms of CSS, do you find the libraries meeting your needs or
> are there limitations that you're finding?

100% [just keep it simple / keep it working!!!]

> 9) How do you leverage the JS libs to affect your use of CSS in your
> web applications?

I try to follow the most I can the MVC pattern, letting the CSS
control the whole look'n'feel and using mootools to do the rest....

> 10) How quickly were you able to leverage the JS libs to help you in
> your development?

With mootools, taking into account the current documentation, its
source code (which unfortunately is not fully commented), the samples
and other peoples code...faaaaaaaaaaaaast!!!