[Catalyst] Preferred Ajax framework

[Toby Corkindale]

Mesdaq, Ali wrote:
> Hello everyone new to the list and new to catalyst in general. I am
> still trying to figure out best ways of using it in our environment with
> least amount of pain. To do that I am trying to plan it out before I
> start really getting my hands dirty.
> 
> My question is what is everyone's preferred Ajax framework? There are
> tons of them out there but which one in your experience is the best. A
> little short reason would also be appreciated to see if my priorities
> line up with your reasons.

Dojo. In theory you can let non-programmers edit your templates, and 
they can understand using Dojo widgets, because they look like HTML tags.
Also, lots of things are already available as widgets, so you don't have 
to code them yourself.

Downsides: Can get quite slow to load pages. Documentation is either 
lacking or totally incorrect for many pages. Attempts to correct said 
documentation by me failed, as you need to sign a disclosure saying your 
contributions are owned by the Dojo Foundation (so they can publish a 
book later) - and frankly, I wasn't going to put in the amount of effort 
required to do the application and disclosure signing, just to correct 
them. Emails to the appropriate devs appeared didn't achieve much, I 
noted when the .4 release was out.

So expect to read the source code to figure out how to use it.. Which 
then negates the benefit I just gave of "non-programmers can use the 
widgets".

We've got a large amount of complex pages invested in Dojo now though, 
so we're probably going to continue to use it for a while. The doco 
situation is slowly improving though.

Toby