When Should I Use A Javascript Framework Library?

I'm writing a small web that just makes some animation and shows some information as a homepage and a list of links. All that is going to be generated dynamically in the client sid

Solution 1:

On SO you will find a lot of people (including me) who advocate the use of jQuery (in particular). To me, it's everything a framework should be: small, lightweight, extensible, compact yet powerful and brief syntax and it solves some pretty major problems. I would honestly have a hard time trying to envision a project where I wouldn't use it (or another framework).

The reason to use it is to solve browser compatibility issues. Consider my answer to javascript to get paragraph of selected text in web page:

functiongetSelectedParagraphText() {
  var userSelection;
  if (window.getSelection) {
      selection = window.getSelection();
  } elseif (document.selection) {
      selection = document.selection.createRange();
  }
  var parent = selection.anchorNode;
  while (parent != null && parent.localName != "P") {
    parent = parent.parentNode;
  }
  if (parent == null) {
    return"";
  } else {
    return parent.innerText || parent.textContent;
  }
}

If you're familiar with Javascript a lot of this should be familiar to you: things like the check for innerText or textContent (Firefox 1.5) and so on. Pure Javascript is littered with things like this. Now consider the jQuery solution:

functiongetSelectedParagraphText() {
  var userSelection;
  if (window.getSelection) {
      selection = window.getSelection();
  } elseif (document.selection) {
      selection = document.selection.createRange();
  }
  var parent = selection.anchorNode;
  var paras = $(parent).parents("p")
  return paras.length == 0 ? "" : paras.text();
}

Where jQuery really shines though is with AJAX. There JavaScript code snippets around to find the correct object to instantiate (XMLHttpRequest or equivalent) to do an AJAX request. jQuery takes care of all that for you.

All of this for under 20k for the core jQuery Javascript file. To me, it's a must-have.

Solution 2:

I'd start right now. Libraries like jQuery and prototype not only insulate you from browser differences, but also provide you with a shorthand for communicating your ideas to other programmers.

Solution 3:

Whenever writing javascript isn't your business.

JS libraries, other than providing helpers and shortcuts, also take care of corner cases, browser incompatibilities and quirks, and best practices. It is better that you spend time developing your application, and fall back to native JS only if you have to.

Solution 4:

The deal with jquery is the approach to do javascript but with less work and communicate easier to others, so I would say Yes

Think of it this way, would you rather write a paper in microsoft word or notepad