[sf-perl] [javascript] JS toolkit for Perl applications

[Quinn Weaver]

On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 9:07 AM, Fred Moyer <fred at redhotpenguin.com> wrote:
> A bit off topic, but wondering what people are using for Javascript
> toolkits for their Perl based web applications.
>
> JQuery?  MooTools?  YUI?

jQuery.  It's a really nice little Swiss Army knife, easy to pick up
and start using.  A little code in jQuery gets a lot done.  Like a
good Swiss Army Knife, it has exotic attachments for seldom-done tasks
(e.g. drag-and-drop), which are also pretty easy.

More recently I've picked up Dojo, at a client's behest.  It's pretty
good too, but very different philosophically; it's all about widgets
that you embed in your code by applying special dojo* attributes to
regular HTML entities.  The effect is that you get nice widgets with
various magical behaviors (autocompleting
combination-text-and-drop-down boxes, for instance, or Excel-like
grids).  The downside is that you end up with presentation logic in
your markup and it breaks validation.  (The jQuery approach is,
instead, to put all your JavaScript in a separate .js file and let it
access your HTML entities using selectors—e.g. entity type, class
attribute, or id attribute, although you can use fancier criteria.)

I know jQuery has a widget extension, but I haven't used it; I've only
used Dojo widgets.

Anyway… there are lots of good toolkits out there, but jQuery is my
favorite.  It seems to be the majority choice among hackers I know.
But Dojo is not bad at all.

-- 
Quinn Weaver Consulting, LLC
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