AJAX toolkit selection criteria

[Anastasia Cheetham]

We're currently considering four AJAX toolkits (Dojo, Prototype, YUI  
and Mochikit), and this morning, we discussed possible criteria for  
selecting which one the Fluid project will work with. What follows  
are the criteria we discussed. We'd appreciate any comments,  
thoughts, additions, etc.


Over-arching criteria:

- accessibility
- extensibility

More detailed criteria:

- ease of debugging
- cross-browser support (IE 6 & 7, Firefox 1.5 and 2, Safari on 10.4,  
Opera)
- accessibility support: existing and/or planned
    - ARIA
    - keyboard control
    - high contrast support
- library for DOM manipulation
- library for Javascript support
- plays nice with other javascript toolkits (e.g. no global namespacing)
- gentle use of coarse-grained even handlers (e.g. doesn't use onload())
- even abstraction
- security
- supports extension
- skinability - ease of changing default appearance
- community support


--
Anastasia Cheetham                   a.cheetham at utoronto.ca
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre / University of Toronto
(416)946-3582

  "The idea that technology takes away mystery or awe or
   wonder in nature is wrong. It's quite the opposite.
   It's much more wonderful to know what something's
   really like than to sit there and just simply, in
   ignorance, say 'Oooh, isn't it wonderful?'"
                                 -- Richard Feynman