A Few Interesting Javascript Libraries

In the last two days, I've discovered a few javascript libraries that have been around for a while, but apparently I've been oblivious to. The cool thing about using javascript libraries is that there is active development happening and people who really know javascript are spending time troubleshooting them - looking out for memory leaks, misbehaviors, and ensuring cross-platform/cross-browser capability. The downside is that you might not always be able to follow the code closely enough to really be able to solve any problems that might creep up.

The first and probably the most important library I've come accross is called behavior.js . It helps to reduce the tag soup that can end up on pages by using DOM to attach javascript actions post page-load. There's an interesting demo combining this functionality with Scriptaculous. If you go to the Demo and view page source, you'll see how light and tag free the page is while providing some pretty cool functionality at the same time.

Speaking of Scriptaculous, it's an extension of the Prototype Javascript Framework that provides a series of cool javascript effects as well as some DOM utilities and some testing utilities. It's pretty heavy, but at the same time, a little bit of compression can ease the pain a little bit.

Then there's Rico, which I found similar to scriptaculous - it has a few visual effects, drag and drop, etc. but the built in ajax framework seems a little easier to work with at first glance.

Another really cool library is jquery by John Resig - much thinner than prototype and it provides probably the easiest syntax to work with while being pretty powerful to boot. It does have a few cinematic affects, but the real power with jQuery is in the simplicity and readability of it's syntax.

All of this really points to giving Ruby on Rails at least a trial run, but I just can't seem to bring myself up to learning another scripting language right now.