HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
jQuery
jQuery is the most popular JavaScript library right now. It is widely used because it's
easy to learn and because it makes it simple for even a new user to accomplish a lot with
relatively little code, as you'll see in this lesson. The advance that jQuery introduced is
the ability to use CSS selectors in JavaScript. One of the toughest problems for
JavaScript programmers had been coming up with easy ways to target specific elements
on the page when manipulating page content—jQuery enabled programmers to use a
technique they were already familiar with. Other JavaScript libraries have since added
support for CSS selectors, as well. Whenever any of the JavaScript libraries introduce a
powerful new feature, it makes its way to the other libraries relatively quickly.
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You can download jQuery and browse the documentation at http://jquery.com. jQuery is
also popular because of the wide variety of tools for developers that have been built on
top of it. For example, a variety of advanced user interface components have been built
using jQuery and are available at http://jqueryui.com/. These components include things
such as date pickers, sortable lists, and dialog boxes that are widely used and can be
painful to create from scratch.
Dojo
Dojo is a JavaScript library that's popular with programmers. It has been widely adopted
by corporate websites and as a component in packaged Web applications. Dojo has a bit
more built in functionality than jQuery; for example, it includes data grid functionality
that enables you to create tables that are sortable on-the-fly. Like jQuery, Dojo has a sep-
arate UI library, called Dijit. You can download Dojo and read more about it at
http://www.dojotoolkit.org/.
Yahoo! UI
Yahoo! UI, or YUI for short, is a JavaScript library created by Yahoo! to use on its
website. They've shared it with the rest of the world. You can find out more about it at
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/. Yahoo! UI provides roughly the same set of features as
the other popular JavaScript library and has the added benefit of robust, professionally
written documentation. One disadvantage of YUI is that it lacks the community of third-
party developers that libraries like jQuery and Dojo have, so there are fewer plug-ins and
extensions available.
Prototype
Prototype is, in some ways, the original JavaScript library. Prototype slipped a bit in pop-
ularity when jQuery arrived due to jQuery's ease of use, but has since added most of
 
 
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