Ajax Frameworks, Toolkits and Libraries

Using a Web 2.0 approach to building applications like Ajax can create many advantages. Users get to work with more responsive Web applications that are closer to desktop applications than their Web 1.0 counterparts. Users don’t have to wait around for pages to load and everyone’s happy.

Or are they? The advantages of Ajax come with some costs. The Ajax approach relies heavily on JavaScript so developers of these applications need to have strong skills in this area. Developers can be caught out with some very onerous scripting duties. Ensuring that Ajax-style applications work in all major current browsers can be a big task, especially as one of the main components of Ajax, the XMLHttpRequest object, is implemented in two different ways. Add to that a need to support or fail gracefully in older browsers and you’ve given many developers a giant sized headache!

One solution to these cross-browser scripting problems is to use an existing Ajax framework, toolkit or script library. These frameworks hide the code and provide great cross-browser solutions. Some of the commercial products even provide a full development environment.

In this article, I want to cover some of the most popular browser frameworks and script libraries that are available. I won’t cover the frameworks that link to specific server-side technologies or the article would end up being very long indeed!

I also want to walk you through a simple example of how one library, Sarissa, can make scripting a little easier. As with the other Ajax examples that I’ve worked through, you’ll need to run this example through a Web server. On my Windows XP machine, I’ll use IIS (Internet Information Systems) but you could use any other Web server. I tested this example in IE 6 and Firefox 1.5.

You can download the files for the article from the blue Properties box that contains the article PDF. There's a heading titled Code Download and you can click the Details link next to it to get the zip file.