Prototype vs. Atlas
Sunday, January 15 2006
I ran across this great comparison between Prototype (a popular javascript library, most notably used natively in Ruby on Rails) and Atlas.
I have never hidden my distaste for Atlas, I think it’s too bulky and complex, but perhaps the future of JavaScript is huge client-side engines like Atlas. As download speeds get better and better maybe the bulk won’t be a problem for users. If we are going to have a client-side engine like Atlas though, I would much prefer complete access to all of that JavaScript… and the rights to modify and re-distribute (which is what you would be doing when any user hit your website), something I doubt we will ever get from Microsoft.
-James
Comments
- #1 scottgu@microsoft.com on 1.21.2006 at 10:37 PM
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The full source code for the Atlas library is included in the Atlas download. There are both debug and release script source files shipped with each version, and they can be optionally modified on a per application basis.
More recent versions of Atlas ship across multiple files. You can choose to include (or not) whichever of the client libraries you want. Some people just want simple callbacks, and can use those. Some want to build mashup apps, and want richer client-side databinding controls and can use those. Some want to build client-email programs (ala GMail) and can use some of the bigger framework features if they want those. The key thing is that the developer using it gets to choose what they use or not.
I'd also recommend checking out the server-side atlas controls like <atlas:updatepanel> -- which make building Ajax apps really easy (and don't require the developer to write any client-side javascript). I have a task-list application built here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2005/12/26/433997.aspx
It supports paging, sorting, editing, insertion, master-details, RSS and more. It is about ~40 lines of clean C# server code total. I didn't have to write a single line of Javascript to build it.
Hope this helps,
Scott