webOS and the Prototype Javascript Framework

Sunday, 22 February 2009 Ken Young

webOS skill level: Beginner
Technologies covered: Prototype Javascript Framework
Prerequisite knowledge: Advanced-level HTML, CSS, and Javascript, AJAX

Palm has announced that the Mojo toolkit will be bundled with the Prototype Javascript framework "to assist with registering for events and DOM handling among many other great features". The Prototype Javascript framework is a third party, open-source AJAX framework "that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications". This is not to be confused with the prototype object in Javascript, which is a programming construct built into the Javascript core since version 1.1.

This is a good article on Prototype and AJAX:

https://www.prototypejs.org/learn/introduction-to-ajax

For an overview of how Prototype extends the DOM, read this article:

https://www.prototypejs.org/learn/extensions

Or if you prefer to get into the nuts and bolts, the full API Documentation:

https://www.prototypejs.org/api

Prototype also supports a number of UI controls and widgets. How many of these will actually be supported in webOS (if any) remains to be seen. Mojo may provide a similar set of widgets that provide superior performance because they could be supported by the hardware (e.g. hardware graphics acceleration).

In terms of the application performance you might expect when using the Prototype framework, it looks like Prototype is not one of the faster frameworks out there. So keep this in mind if you intend to rely heavily on the Prototype framework in your applications.

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2 Comments

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Eric makes this comment

Tuesday, 08 December 2009

Do you have to explicitly include the Prototype library in an application's index.html, or is it somehow included in mojo.js? If you have to include it what's the path?

Thanks
krishnan makes this comment

Tuesday, 09 February 2010

Hi Friend,

Is Ajax Webservice request are also based on Prototype Javascript framework in addition to XMLHTTPrequest.

"keep in mind if you intend to rely heavily on the Prototype framework in your applications."

I use XMLHttpRequest in my application. Is there any other way to make web request other than Ajax? And which is the best one to use among XMLHTTPRequest and Ajax request?

Regards,
krishnan.

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