Comments on: Benchmark: Prototype and jQuery

By: robertrv

robertrv — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:45:47 +0000

Helllo !!

I suppose I’m a bit late to post something here … but I have seen this really interesting test: http://jst.pbwiki.com/

ciao, r

By: Earth

Earth — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:27:14 +0000

~ jQuery:
—
- Fast development:
Does this need any further explanation? If so, compare jQuery code with basic JavaScript code and you’ll find out.
- Amazing cross-browser effects
Amazing effects can be created with support to the popular browsers. Most of the jQuery effects out there are created basicly which reduces the size of the add-on and means that effects can be customized into richer looks only when wanted. In other words: download the add-on and use the smaller basic plugin or customize it into a larger and richer plugin whenever needed.
- Easy hackable:
Even though the jQuery website does not have an amazing tool to customize the framework to meet your needs such as the mootools website has parts of the framework code can be removed if not used without causing any problems. This requires a bit more technical knowledge, though.
- Readability high on larger projects:
The coding is much smaller than most of the JavaScript frameworks but this certainly doesn’t mean that it affects readability as a disadvantage, so readability stays high on larger projects.
- Performance:
The more complicated jQuery selectors are known to be quite slower than frameworks such as Mootools and Dojo, but, unless you require every millisecond of performance gain, there is no noticeable difference between jQuery and prototype on that matter.

Browser compatibility: IE 6.0+, FF 2+, Safari 2.0+, Opera 9.0+

~ Prototype (compared to jQuery):
—
- Amazing cross-browser effects
- Slower development
- Larger in size:
More code to write + larger framework
- Slightly faster

Browser compatibility: IE 6.0+, FF 1.5+, Safari 2.0+, Opera 9.25+

External links:
- 4 popular Framework selector speedtest: http://mootools.net/slickspeed/
- Framework comparison: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/UP3/Javascript+Toolkit+Comparison

Note: this comparison is based on my own opinion (and perhaps from a lot more jQuery users) and the comparison isn’t very throughout as my knowledge is limited on frameworks other than jQuery.

By: Rafa Soares

Rafa Soares — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:42:01 +0000

Dilemma (apparently) solved.
In another bost in this blog, I’ve found Interface Elements for jQuery.
It has just the effects I want, the way I want (and a bit more).

I’ll just see how good it is to use.

By: Rafa Soares

Rafa Soares — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:54:41 +0000

Hereâ€™s my dilemma:
jQuery seems great, code looks much more simpler.
But, script.aculo.us have the SlideDown effect just the exact way I want (really sliding the content down) as jQuery doesnâ€™t (it just resizes the container and the content remains static, masked by the container).

So Iâ€™m very foward script.aculo.us. But it uses Prototype, not jQuery.

I canâ€™t decide to use either jQuery or Prototype + script.aculo.usâ€¦

By: John

John — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 15:41:19 +0000

Could you repeat that test with jQuery 1.1, please?

jQuery 1.1 is many times faster than Version 1.0.1

Thanks,
John

By: Jean-Philippe Encausse

Jean-Philippe Encausse — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 16:33:59 +0000

Hi,
I’ve developed many script module (With prototype) doing lots of initialization onLoad with $$(‘DIV.classname’)

Then I tried to override $$ by
- Prototype document.getElementsByClassName
- Simon Willison document.getElementsBySelector
- JQuery (not already test)

Even if there is little difference (some ms) in bench. Each implementation seems to be too slow (especially with IE).

So using a given js lib or an other will not resolve performance issues…

By: Mike Chabot

Mike Chabot — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 02:28:14 +0000

With jQuery’s class selectors, I have found that it is much faster to be more specific with the selector by writing $(‘div.test’) instead of just $(‘.test’). The speedup I noticed when being more specific was significant.

By: Simon Jia

Simon Jia — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:29:16 +0000

Try Simon Willison’s document.getElementsBySelector, that’s even faster. I’m using jQuery and Prototype for a few different projects. After screwing with the selector syntax, I finally decided to drop it for both frameworks and go with Simon Willison’s solution.
I think there were an early post about a blog post “Misleading of jQuery”. In that blog, there were a long discussion on this issue and some one even made a test script to compare the speeds. The results are very clear, Simon Willison’s function is lightweight and hella faster. Here’s the link to the test http://commontags.com/test/CSSselectors-benchmark.htm

Link to Simon Willison’s solution:
http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2003/03/25/getElementsBySelector

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 17:46:44 +0000

Cute. The guy does some tests, notes that it looks like that jQuery isn’t actually much (if at all significantly) slower than Prototype, and the jQuery fans bridle and try to cast the thing as a hit piece.

By: r00t

r00t — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 10:28:11 +0000

results doesn’t change my choice… besides the person doing the benchmark is a prototype user, c”,)

jquery still rules for me!

By: jQuery is Slow! huh! « Mental Vomits

jQuery is Slow! huh! « Mental Vomits — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 18:07:03 +0000

[...] Dion Almer reports [...]

By: Rey Bango

Rey Bango — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:44:24 +0000

@Claudio:
One of your readers posted new & very different results based that seem to contradict some of your findings. You can see the results here:

Via Google Spreadsheet:
http://0nz.spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?id=o04790098234894520511.5178455417629729589.12842749026303919978.6392792159332293656#

or for those without access to a Google login:
http://www.intoajax.com/pvjcompare.jpg

By: Google Logs

Google Logs — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 06:34:26 +0000

I like JQuery’s easy pattern following the CSS selection. also, i like most the power of prototype.. definitely this post is worth some time ..

By: Alister Cameron

Alister Cameron — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:56:11 +0000

Addevent test in jQuery could also have been:

$(‘#test’).click(function() { alert(this) });

No idea on the speed differences.

Would love John Resig’s thoughts on this testing overall!

You there, John?!

- Alister

By: Rob Gonda

Rob Gonda — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 23:37:14 +0000

I agree with Dean; also, which browser did you use for these benchmarks? Prototype is even slower on IE.

By: Claudio Cicali

Claudio Cicali — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 23:34:11 +0000

Meaningless, yes, just about every benchmarks and statistics :) My tests were run just to have a “feel” of how they COULD compare. DOM was very simple.

Maybe I could only have helped someone (with more spare time), to test more complex DOMs having not to re-think which KIND of tests to perform (or, yes, part of them) ;)

As you asked, code is here: http://claudio.cicali.org/files/benchmark_j.html
http://claudio.cicali.org/files/benchmark.html

By: Dean Edwards

Dean Edwards — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 23:08:46 +0000

Prototype is very slow to process a large resultset. I’m guessing these tests were performed on very small DOMs.

These benchmarks are probably meaningless.

By: Prototype vs jQuery - aNieto2K

Prototype vs jQuery - aNieto2K — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 21:10:13 +0000

[...] Ya era hora que alguien se pusiera ha hacer pruebas de entre las librerÃas JS mÃ¡s conocidas, en este caso ha tocado Prototype y jQuery. Parece que la conclusiÃ³n a dicho benchmark es claro y rotundo. [...]