

JQuery vs MooTools - samuel
http://jqueryvsmootools.com/

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samuel
I'm not submitting this as a flamebait. On the contrary, I'm fairly interested
about HNers opinions about how these frameworks compare. I have little to
nothing front end experience(and want to learn a JS framework). In my
inexperienced view MooTools seems cleaner, but jQuery it's way more popular.

~~~
mhd
If you haven't done a lot of JavaScript front end programming, I'd recommend
jquery. You'll spend considerable time just learning about the DOM and how to
select and modify the nodes of your dynamic HTML content. and jquery is
basically just a thin JavaScript DSL for doing that. So there's no big
overhead you have to learn at the same time and most tutorials and examples
target just what you'll find yourself doing in the beginning.

Once you feel comfortable playing around and adding minor effects (week or
two), you might want to build bigger applications -- which is where a lot of
non-jquery frameworks see their raison d'etre, by making it more obvious how
to structure your applications. Some people don't even get that far, as they
might do a lot on the backend level and are perfectly satisfied with jquery's
innate abilities and that of some plugins provided.

So I wouldn't hurry things. If you find yourself in need of a framework for
bigger apps and/or more organization with your co-workers, browse through some
of the "heavier" framework at that time. Take a look at MooTools, YUI3, but
also at things like knockout, backbone and JavaScriptMVC.(Maybe even
SproutCore or Cappuccino)

