Friday, January 19th, 2007
Prototype 1.5, now with Documentation
Category: Examples
, JavaScript, Library, Prototype
It is documentation Friday. The new site prototypejs.org has launched, and the call for documentation help rang through to some people.
This new documentation includes:
There is still room for a lot more help, so join in.
3.3 rating from 80 votes
ROCK!
Too little, too late, in my opinion. I had recently been in the market for a javascript library and tried Prototype, Mootools and jQuery. I opted to go with jQuery because I really like the chaining mechanism, it has a very small footprint, and, most importantly, it has excellent documentation.
Prototype has had chaining for a long time. And I despise the jQuery cult.
prototype.js has become *the* JS standard IMO.
@Mario: If being passionate about a project is considered being part of cult, then I would say that every major project today should be considered cults with there fair share of members. From Prototype to jQuery to YUI to Drupal to PHP to Rails, every project has people that love the way their project does things and will go out of their way to preach the virtues of those projects. These folks aren’t cult members, they’re just passionate about their work. So to make a statement that jQuery is in any way “cultish” is absurd and shows how little you know about the project. We just really care about the effort and work hard to build the community and get the word out.
To the Prototype team, many congrats. I know that you folks have been working hard to get all of this stuff in order. Great job.
Rey Bango - jQuery Project Team
There is only one cult on the web and its The Rails Cult
@Joe
I’d say that it *was* the JS standard. There’s too many great libraries (Mootools, Prototype, jQuery, YUI, Dojo, etc…) to really label any single one a standard anymore.
Even though YUI and other libraries caught up, I still think Prototype is probably one of the most used frameworks.
I’m excited to see the nice new site and even more the very complete looking documentation with good examples. Well done.
Now it will be even harder too choose a framework since most of them come with good documentation now.
I must say I grow weary of the comments that say things like “Forget LIBRARY X, try LIBRARY Y instead for these reasons…” whenever a story gets posted about LIBRARY X.
I’m intentionally omitting mention of specific libraries because I’ve seen it happen for each and every one of the major five. I’m tired of seeing the comments for every single Ajaxian post turn into a framework war.
We’re all very passionate about the tools we use, but I’m pretty sure you’re not going to sway anyone to your library of choice from a random blog comment.
I agree with Andrew. I too have seen the comments, that’s some reason for my hostility.
Finally the documentation is out. good work!
I guess it’s more a matter of preference - I tried Prototype first and thought it was a bit complicated; then I went to Mootools and there was some odd stuff about it and then I tried jquery and found one that I liked. I don’t really consider myself cultish as I’ve only been using jquery for about two weeks but I’m already able to do some amazing stuff with it.
Sorry to invoke your hostility Mario, wasn’t intentional. Was really just stating my opinion - we’re all entitled to one, are we not?
I can finally lay to rest my myriad of bookmarks dedicated to scattered prototype documentation. Reading their new site over the last couple of days has really gotten me excited about some of the stuff I never knew existed!
Score one for prototype!
This is too little to late. My developer team was looking for a framework and looked at Prototype but the lack of documentation was a huge problem when selling to upper management.
Instead we went with YUI since it was documented which made support much easier. Had robust documentation existed from the beginning we would have happily adopted it.
“Too little to late” is bullcrappy. If i read that again I r gonna spew 8P.
>>> Instead we went with YUI
I tried that… it’s bloated, would not recommend it. BTW the comment about Prototype lacking documentation (prior to release 1.5) is not accurate. There was a ton of very good documentation available (in various blogs), but it wasn’t centralized.
MochiKit is far better than prototype or jQuery - you are all deceived.
:P