I definitely found YUI to be a pleasant experience as well while writing the chapter on it my second book. It's one of the easier libraries to pick up, even for novice JS programmers, which is something I've heard frequently from many different sources. That's not something you can say about a great many JS libraries out there today. My only "complaint", if it can be called that, is that I don't find the widgets to be all that rich, as compared to many other available options. That's in no way to say they are bad, and they're more than sufficient, and even more appropriate, in many situations. But if you're looking to create real cutting-edge, very fancy UIs, YUI *may* not be the best choice.
It's interesting that when someone asks what "AJAX library" to use with S2, most of the replies are really full-fledged RIA libraries. Certainly GWT falls in that category, as would YUI I think. Are you looking truly for AJAX alone, or do you really need all the bells and whistles, widgets, effects, all that sort of stuff? If it's plain AJAX you're after, there are some solid options. Prototype is one of the best, very small, simple, powerful. APT is good if you prefer the taglib and no JavaScript at all approach. DWR is probably my personal favorite right now (err, other than APT! LOL) Just the appropriate module from Mootools or Dojo is good. jQuery is certainly an excellent choice. That's just to name a few. If it's a full RIA library you're after, the answers might be a little different. ExtJS is one of the best (although there seems to be some concern about licensing that I've seen, I'm not fully conversant on it though). Dojo is always a viable choice, and is considerably more so since the 1.0 release hit. I personally have had *great* success with dhtmlx components (which couldn't be considered a full RIA library, but for widgets there's few better IMO). jQuery has a robust ecosystem of widgets from what I've heard (no hands-on experience yet). GWT is interesting if, as someone else said, you're willing to accept the paradigm shift. Probably everyone around here knows my personal feelings about JSF, but that doesn't change the fact that it's always worth considering. It all comes down to what you need. If it's just plain AJAX, it's a different question than if you are looking for widgets and the whole shebang (even if the line is certainly blurring these days). Frank -- Frank W. Zammetti Author of "Practical DWR 2 Projects" (2008, Apress, ISBN 1-59059-941-1) and "JavaScript, DOM Scripting and Ajax Projects" (2007, Apress, ISBN 1-59059-816-4) and "Practical Ajax Projects With Java Technology" (2006, Apress, ISBN 1-59059-695-1) Java Web Parts - http://javawebparts.sourceforge.net Supplying the wheel, so you don't have to reinvent it! On Thu, January 17, 2008 7:18 am, Ted Husted wrote: > On Jan 17, 2008 7:07 AM, tzhang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> Thanks to Jeromy and Ted , your comments definitely help me a lot. >> >> I looked through the YUI website, the widgets are quite rich. >> I still concern about if I want to use the Struts2 + YUI, I have to know >> pretty much about the YUI , right? Is YUI easy to learn and use? Since >> our >> developers don't know much about javascript. > > It's not as much a matter of learning YUI as it is a matter of > learning the proper way to code in JavaScript. A good start there is > to go through the "Douglas Crockford "The JavaScript Programming > Language" videos on the YUI theatre site. > > * http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/ > > (Really, do this today!) > > Personally, I find creating interfaces in JavaScript to be much > simpler than wresting with server tags and scriplets. If we had in > 1998 the JavaScript libraries and tools we have in 2008, server pages > and JSF would never have been invented. > > As for YUI itself, my team was an early adopter of the DataTable (as > in the first beta). We ran into issues, but even as novice JavaScript > programmers, we never found an issue we couldn't patch by reviewing > the code. Of course, having tools like FireBug that let you step > through the scripts makes a world of difference. > > HTH, Ted > <http://www.StrutsMentor.com/> > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
