JavaScript Frameworks

floyd333

I’ve just been asked to do some work with the KnockOut.js framework on a project with work. This got me thinking about the other JavaScript frameworks. There are lots of them out there. Jquery seems to be most popular. I’m interested to hear what other frameworks people are using. ...

dahayeser

I am using Sencha's Ext JS, and i find it very good. It is very powerful and provides excellent grids and charting. It is also very good for object orientated JavaScript. It provides components itself and then allows you to easily extend from these components and create your own reusable components or xtypes as they call them.

There is a licensing fee if you are using it for commercial purposes though but I don't think it is too severe. I think a dev license with support costs around $1000 but about 500 should cover it with out support.

I'd say jquery has a lot of Ext's features at this stage but they are plugins by random developers rather than part of the framework as is the case with Ext.

The only down side I have encountered so far is that they made major changes from release 3 to 4 on core areas such as instantiating objects meaning that there was a lot of work to be done to make our apps forward compatible.. I'd be hoping that the major work has been done there and this won't be the case again when we move to Ext Js 5

Jayo_M

I use Dojo Toolkit. It's extremely extensive and very powerful. It could be criticised for being a bit heavyweight, but the AMD loader sorted all that out.

www.dojotoolkit.org

Procasinator

I know definitions can be loose, but I'd consider something like jQuery to be different to that of Knockout.

Knockout (like most of it's counterparts) are designed to be used in specific ways. They mostly follow the MVVM pattern, and you are expected to design your application using the patterns and standards they use. This I would refer to as a framework. This frameworks usually are quite opinionated, and will give standard ways to do things like templating and model binding.

jQuery, on the other hand, is not so prescriptive. It allows you to accomplish tasks by an API. It doesn't expect or require you to layout your application in any specific way. You just use the components as you see fit.

Of course, there is a lot of overlap, but they seem to have different aims. jQuery main aim is to provide a nice wrapper around the DOM. It doesn't prescribe how your application should be wired up.

I'd group things like Backbone.js, Ember.js, Angular, Meteor, e.t.c to be different to jQuery, Mootools, Prototype, e.t.c.

Often you will use libraries from both categories to make an application: rich interactions done with the later, application layout and structure with the former.

awec

It isn't a javascript framework but anyone working with javascript for a project of a decent size should look into typescript - http://typescriptlang.org