Recently I had to develop several web applications. I did extensive research regarding JavaScript UI Libraries but I haven’t been able to find one I was really satisfied with. What I mean with UI libraries is a library which provides user-controls such as buttons, combo boxes, grids, charts, layout, …
What I found so far and why I didn’t like it a 100%
- jQuery UI has too few controls. (I know there are a lot of plugins and you can nearly find everything but it is not the same as a complete library made and tested by one team or group)
- Dijit (Dojo). I really like this one but when I try to use it in my websites I’m always having troubles. They don’t seem to be as easy to use as other libs.
- YUI version 2 had a lot of controls, but the “new” version 3 still misses many controls. (or I am just too dumb to find them) I don’t want to work with both versions at the same time or use an old version which will be replaced soon.
- DHTMLX has many controls and they work really well, but the controls themselves lack many features. (for example the HTMLEditor does not even support to change the text color out of the box or I could not find an easy way to expand/collapse tree nodes with some sort of animation)
If anybody knows of a good library which I have not tried yet or knows how I could use one of the above libraries “better” I would be really happy.
I am wondering why at this point (where web-apps are getting so important) I still can’t find a complete UI framework which would provide me with controls which you can find in other environments since years (or even decades) – for example Java, .net or Delphi to name just a few.
edit:
I know there won’t be a library with every control I ever need, but what I expect from such a library is at least: consistent skins, api, documentation, validation and the most important controls you’d need in business apps/websites (datepicker, button, editor with support for numerical data, grid/tree, layout controls, HTML editor) AND the possibility to create your own controls. good to have: charts or reporting
Ext JS provides the best GUI widgets by far. I’ve used it for a large intranet project, and have been completely satisfied. It’s available under GPLv3 and a commercial license.
Be extremely careful when evaluating open-source frameworks. They tend to religiously promote the quality of their projects, but I’ve found that poor documentation and buggy code are pervasive. Dojo claims heavy industry involvement, but their documentation is poor, and it’s not hard to find bugs on their website (the dijit example pages have been broken for months at a time…).