Question

Which Javascript Framework To Use In Building Ui Widgets For Biology

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13.2 years ago

Andra Waagmeester 3.2k

If you need to develop an extensive set of biology related UI widgets which framework would you consider? I have been using jQuery mostly. But recently became aware of ExtJS. How many of these javascript frameworks are available and are there already libraries providing sets of Biology related widgets?

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ADD COMMENT • link updated 5.1 years ago by Biostar 20 • written 13.2 years ago by Andra Waagmeester 3.2k

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I indeed saw that question, But in this question I am really interested in GUI widgets and I thought that that question was more into basic parsing stuff

ADD REPLY • link 13.2 years ago by Andra Waagmeester 3.2k

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duplicate? Bio-Javascript?

ADD REPLY • link updated 5.1 years ago by Ram 44k • written 13.2 years ago by Pierre Lindenbaum 164k

score 5 · Answer 1 · 2011-10-21

There are a lot of javascript frameworks; besides jQuery and ExtJS, the big ones I've looked at closely are dojo, YUI, Google's closure library, and prototype.js. And there are a bunch of others that I haven't really looked at.

jQuery's roots are in adding a bit of interactivity to a server-generated page. So if the DOM nodes in your web page are mostly coming from the server, then jQuery is absolutely the way to go in my opinion. On the other hand, if you're writing a full-blown client-side application, where you're creating most of the DOM nodes in JS code, then one of the bigger frameworks (particularly dojo, YUI, and closure) might be more suitable.

At least, that's what I would have said a few years ago. jQuery has really taken off in popularity lately, and people are adding on more and more functionality that's suited to client-side apps (like jQuery UI, for example). So even if I was writing a client-side app, nowadays I might just go with the crowd and use jQuery. Plus, more people are likely to be familiar with it, so I'd say it's a pretty safe choice.

Ram · Answer 2 · 2011-10-21

ExtJS is more of a widget library than jQuery, which is really a wrapper that makes JavaScript tolerable.

For a long time ExtJS suffered from a lot of confusion regarding the licensing.

ExtJS is a cohensive and solid set of widgets but it is pretty hard to develop new stuff in it. It is surprisingly hostile to the simplest of non-AJAX GET/POST webflows. There is a lot more support on stackoverflow for jQuery, for instance (121,834 jQuery vs 3,686 ExtJS)

However, widget-wise with jQuery if you want to pull something off the shelf you will have to choose from umpteen different choices of varying quality instead of just one good one:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/159025/jquery-grid-recommendations