Switching from YUI to JQuery

2010-05-17 Computing Jquery · YUI

I have been using the Yahoo YUI Javascript library for more than a couple of years now (perhaps about 4) and although I really like it, I have never felt particularly productive using it.

Over those years I have also dabbled in other frameworks, including:

ExtJS (mainly from my old work looking at theming it – and its heavily based upon YUI.) – I dislike the licensing on ExtJS so it really isn’t an option for me any more
Looked strongly at Cappucino, but there was no real productivity gains to be had, and I wasn’t writing my current application as a solely Javascript app
MooTools – Seems nice but never really gelled with it and I haven’t liked the documentation
SproutCore – Love it so far, but again I am not writing a pure Javascript App.
JQuery – have implemented some solutions over the last 6 months, and loved the productivity

Anyway, what I am currently developing really needed some strong enhancements, such as AJAX calls, better table views, nice widgets for date and time picking – the usual enhancements and I just felt that YUI was taking too long. My wishlist was:

A Very productive library
Good support from a community of active users
Good documentation.
Doesn’t impose made CSS changes
Speed of implementation and download

YUI 3 was a consideration, after all the Javascript team at Yahoo are among the best in the world, but it was too new and so didn’t have the community I was looking for.

I ended up with JQuery. After spending a day or so getting to grips and training myself properly with it, sure enough my productivity using it has reached heights to which I never got near with YUI (2.7 was the latest version I was using).

Another thing that I noticed was that I am actually writing a lot more productive code, rather than implementing bits of script that I change from all over the web. All the functions I need seem to be in the core library.

So right now, I am making many progressive enhancements to our App and it feels all the better for it.