JavaScript Made Easy(er)
Google and Yahoo are tripping all over themselves to help those us of with less time on our hands create reliable, usable web applications. They take different approaches, with Yahoo providing cross-platform JavaScript code and Google providing a new way of building web front-ends.
Yahoo!
Yahoo kicked it off with the initial release of their JavaScript Libraries (earthli News), following up with a second release called AutoComplete, Windowing, Menu and More. The library looks really well-organized, has great documentation and examples and is built on a genuine cross-platform hierarchy (which are cross-referenced from everywhere in the documentation). Included are components like Tooltip, Panel, Dialog, and SimpleDialog as well as a complete Menu implementation.
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Google has also released a toolkit that takes a different tack. The Google Web Toolkit lets you write your AJAX code in Java, which is translated to cross-browser JavaScript for deployment.
“a Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don’t speak browser quirks as a second language. … You write your front end in the Java programming language, and the GWT compiler converts your Java classes to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML.”
Unlike Yahoo’s library, Google’s lets users build and debug their scripts in a familiar Java environment like Eclipse—so stuff like handling mouse events is even testable and debuggable without “alert” boxes. Google also kindly includes examples of their code in action; though the Dynamic Table example didn’t work in Opera, the Kitchen Sink did. The widgets used in the demos are documented (though not as nicely as Yahoo) and can be used directly, as with Yahoo’s components.
Subscribe to the Google Code Blog to keep up-to-date on new developments.