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Yep, I'm surprised jQuery isn't older, as I do recall using dojo and prototype before 2006. jQuery was a huge timesaver, as was dojo, mootools, prototype, etc
by swang 11y ago
Yep, I'm surprised jQuery isn't older, as I do recall using dojo and prototype before 2006.
jQuery was a huge timesaver, as was dojo, mootools, prototype, etc and not having at least one of these libraries would have sucked. And although jQuery "won" it could have easily been any other javascript library.
Even if these libraries somehow didn't exist, there was tons of cross-browser snippets plastered across the web that dealt with most of the common problems (ajax, event listeners, etc).
- gregmac 11y agoWhat drew me to jQuery over Prototype in particular was the fact you could use css-style selectors to get and operate on several elements at once. This often reduced several lines of code in a loop to a couple chained methods. Prototype first came out in Feb 2005. Dojo 0.1 was Aug 2005, and 1.0 (first stable, after a total rewrite) was Nov 2007. I do remember using Prototype with script.aculo.us and thinking it was pretty neat to add some effects to my server-side-created web apps, but that they'd largely stay server side. The first time I saw jQuery, that was when I thought "Yeah, okay, we can actually start building some serious client-side interactions here" instead of just server-generated HTML pages. jQuery took me from hating (but tolerating) javascript to actually enjoying client-side web development.