Talk In Code

Script.aculo.us is a JavaScript framework that allows you to add effects and advanced JavaScript features to any web page. Although Script.aculo.us can be a little slower than Mootools on occasion it makes up for this by having more stuff built into the library components. For example, the slider control is available of both frameworks, but the Script.aculo.us version comes with some handy features (like filling one part of the slider) where the Mootools version doesn’t.

My one problem with Script.aculo.us is the website. There are a few examples and descriptions, but most of what you need to know about seems to be poorly documented or it hasn’t been updated for many months. There is a forum where people can put questions and offer solutions, but again, this seems to be very much out of date and any solutions offered seem to only work with older versions of the framework.

Overall a good framework, with a poor site.

Firebug is by far the best JavaScript debugging plug-in available for Firefox. I have been stuck on a few problems in the past and Firebug has usually provided me with a reason as to why things are going wrong. In fact when developing for other browsers (like Internet Explorer) I can feel a little blind as there are no debugging tools with the power and features of Firebug. It can allow you to stop JavaScript execution at any time using breakpoints.

Firebug is important if you are creating AJAX applications as it will tell you about every client/server communication, what headers where sent and what the response was.

Aside from the decent JavaScript features there are also a host of HTML and CSS features that allow you to edit styling code on the page in real-time or inspect a portion of the page for HTML and style information.

The only thing wrong with the program is that it can slow down some sites like Gmail, but you can turn it off for any site you wish. If you haven’t tried Firebug I suggest that you give it a go.

If you are looking for information about the MooTools JavaScript framework then your first stop should be the MooTools home page. The site not only allows you to download MooTools, but it is also a great resource for learning how to use MooTools.

There are examples of all the things you can do on the demo page, and information about all of the classes available in the framework on the documentation pages.

If you are wondering if MooTools is worth a look, and the examples haven’t convinced you yet, then take a look at this excelent selector speed comparison between Dojo, JQuery, MooTools and Prototype. MooTools isn’t faster than every framework for everything, but is always the fastest framework overall.