This question is more or like of a confirmation. I plan to make a good website and I come from the 2003-2004 environment of php + smarty kind of way of doing things. So I don’t know a lot of jquery and other stuff like that, although I can start learning.
However, I’ve noticed that the plan is to move as much view and model code as possible in the browser and try to implement MVC or MVVM frameworks. I read about backbone.js, knockout js and javascript MVC. I particulary like knockout js (maybe because I stepped through all the tutorials and it has that markup and “magic” similar to smarty), I don’t plan to reinvent the wheel nor to learn something too steep. Is knockout js worth it, especially with this 2.0 release? What are the missing parts?
Basically I want to integrate some jquery ui controls but in the MVC style (ie also have some JSON web services in the back etc – for instance the jQueryMX model comes along just fine here – http://javascriptmvc.com/docs.html#!jquerymx ). I am a little biased towards knockout js – because I consider it light and easy to use a least for a beginner.
Please share your thoughts.
I have used Knockout to develop a complex, feature rich page that relies heavily on jQuery UI and other jQuery plugins. I wouldn’t say it has been easy but having been through the process I now feel very comfortable with Knockout and doubtless will be able to develop future pages a lot quicker.
I can’t speak of backbone as I have not used it, except to say my initial research seemed to indicate that backbone was more ‘heavyweight’ – you write a lot more code and there is more to learn (this is purely anecdotal though).
One thing I have found excellent with knockout is the support community around it. The knockout thread on StackOverflow is fairly active and it is rare for a question to go unanswered.
Another excellent resource are the blogs by Ryan Niemeyer (http://www.knockmeout.net/) and Steve Sanderson – the author of Knockout. (http://blog.stevensanderson.com/)