Why to use JavaScript and Ajax toolkits?
Technologies ·Use JavaScript and Ajax in your web application helps in making the site more interactive and dynamic. But to use JavaScript and Ajax directly in your web application is difficult as you need to handle issues like their compatibility with different browsers. This is where JavaScript of Ajax toolkit comes in picture to help you in designing your application faster without worrying about browser compatibility and writing reusable JavaScript code. This article will show you how toolkits like Prototype, Scriptaculous or JQuery can help you.
If you have worked with JavaScript even once, you must have noticed that it works differently in different browsers. Due to this, you need to make sure that the JavaScript code you write is compatible with all major browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox. This is where you could easily waste 90% of time, which you could have used to improve your application. You need to consider this fact while building Ajax application too as Ajax uses JavaScript to make query to server. Toolkits like Prototype, Scriptaculous, JQuery etc, helps you by internally handling compatibility issues so that you can totally focus on the required output. This helps you to save lot of time. These frameworks or toolkits are tested before release which helps you in giving the same result across all browsers. In this way, a JavaScript or Ajax toolkit prevents you from wasting time on handling browser compatibility issues while providing you with many reusable components.
Developers prefer to use reusable components and modules as it makes their code more maintainable and thus saves lot of time. However, JavaScript lacks modularity and thus makes it difficult to use it for large and complex application. If you need to build a complete web application using Ajax, than lot of things are handled by JavaScript and due to lack of modularity you will end up writing lot of redundant and duplicate code. The More duplicate code you have, more difficult it becomes to maintain it. Prototype, JQuery and other toolkits provide you with lot of reusable components with support for unit testing. As these components free you from the hassle of coding many frequently used features, you end up saving lot of time.
These toolkits come with good documentation which you can download from their homepage and read. Using their documentation, and by following the examples provided, you can learn to use them quickly. So you don’t have to worry about time you need to spend in learning to use these toolkits. Now, using these toolkits you can develop more interactive Ajax application in very short period of time.