Beginning JavaScript, 5th Edition

17Other JavaScript Libraries

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:                

• Using Modernizr to write feature-specific code
• Loading external resources for browsers that do not support certain features
• Using Prototype and MooTools to perform common tasks, such as DOM manipulation and Ajax requests

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

You can find the wrox.com code downloads for this chapter at http://www.wiley.com/go/BeginningJavaScript5E on the Download Code tab. You can also view all of the examples and related files at http://beginningjs.com.

jQuery is the most popular JavaScript library today. It’s used on hundreds of thousands of websites, and yet it’s not the only library JavaScript developers use. In fact, thousands of JavaScript libraries and utilities are available, and each one can typically be categorized into two groups: general and specialty.

The aim of general frameworks is to balance the differences between browsers by creating a new, unified API to perform general tasks like DOM manipulation and Ajax functionality (jQuery is a general framework). Specialty frameworks, on the other hand, focus on a specific ability, such as feature detection. So identify what it is you want to achieve and choose a framework based on that. For example, if you wanted to perform animations and only animations, the script.aculo.us framework (http://script.aculo.us/) could be a good choice for you.

This chapter looks at both general and specific frameworks. When deciding ...