Asynchronous image loading is something that most sites can benefit from, and the YUI has a simple and elegant solution for this. If you're in web development, I highly recommend looking at it, if not using it.
I've used both YUI and jQuery a fair bit and honestly, YUI just doesn't cut it in comparison to jQuery. YUIs DOM level utilities are not nearly as simple or powerful as jQuery's built in stuff, and all of its modules are completely monolithic. YUI manages to hit the worst layers of abstraction: it's a weird mix of the DOM level stuff that isn't much easier to use than standard JS, and a collection of random modules.
jQuery hits the sweet spot for me: it's really easy to build custom things in, there are a ton of libraries out there for complicated stuff, the documentation is significantly better than YUI's, and in my experience it performs better than YUI as well.
None of the things in this article are done better with YUI than jQuery IMO.
What version of YUI did you use? What kinds of websites did you use it for (and what do you use jQuery for now)?
I find YUI 3's Node and NodeList interfaces, which allow you to manipulate and traverse the DOM using selectors, to be just as easy as (and often easier than) the jQuery equivalents.
I can't imagine why anyone would seriously describe YUI's modules as "monolithic", even in YUI 2. YUI 3 in particular has very granular modules, and provides developers with a lot of freedom in being able to load only exactly what they need to accomplish a particular task. I wouldn't describe the selection of modules as "random", either.
It seems especially contradictory to describe YUI, which is inherently modular, as monolithic in comparison to jQuery, which is the very definition of monolithic (everything in a single file, so you load it all even if you don't need it all).
YUI and jQuery are each awesome in many ways and flawed in others, but I don't think your criticisms are fair.
Standard disclaimer applies: I've been a YUI user for years and am now a member of the YUI team, so I clearly have a preference here.
what does this article have to do with jQuery? can we please stop with the fanboy <<myLib>> is better than <<urLib>>? it's short sighted and misleading.
i've used both libraries in many commercial projects for large corporations. both have their strengths and weaknesses. in many cases, directly comparing them is like comparing apples and oranges.
YUI is well suited to larger "kitchen sink" apps where you require many rich widgets working in unison. You know that if you use a YUI widget, it's professionally coded, well-documented, and works cross-browser. The same can't be said for all jQuery plugins. YUI 2 doesn't have the syntactic suger of jQuery, however, YUI3 fixes that. Finally, YUI is ANYTHING but monolithic. you only load in the files you want. jQuery is the lib that is all in one file - the very definition of monolithic.
jQuery is great for simplicity and ease of development. Great for a website that you want to add some DOM interactivity and/or AJAX. Perfect for "find something -> do something". While it has a huge amount of plugins, they vary dramatically in terms of quality. If you are building a large web app, things can start to break down with a mix of plugins from different authors and line upon line of chained methods.
in short, both are great libraries with excellent strengths. use the right tool for the job.
