So, your 500 line heuristic: Is that 500 lines with all of the properties on one line with the selector or is it a line per property?

I love some of the innovations it brings - isolating memory and performance on a per-tab basis - it makes web surfing quicker and application development easier. It takes a lot of what’s good from the different browsers and it really will help advance web browsers in general (in the competition fosters innovation kind of way).

On the other hand, I’m not a huge fan of a few things it does. The biggest issue I have is with their JavaScript engine - they decided to go custom and we’re seeing some problems with our code at Zenbe. Not very big issues, but in my mind, if it works in craptastic IE7, it should work in Chrome. I don’t think they needed to go custom with their JS engine - I see no real reason or advantage to it, and it’s not something I really enjoy dealing with.

The other thing that I just absolutely despise, even though it’s totally minor, is the fact that they use webkit for CSS, but on text anti-aliasing they decided to go “Windows native” instead of using webkit’s text rendering methods. This results in completely unaliased text, which looks akin to IE6 (even IE7 is smart enough to anti-alias text). This just frustrates me because we’re supposed to be moving forward, not backward, and text can very easily look completely gross in Chrome and fine in everything else. So, minor, but a major pet peeve, especially since I can’t imagine why they would make consciously that choice (they said so at Ajax Experience).

So overall, while I think Chrome is going to be good for the web in general, if it came out for Mac today I would be in no rush to get it or use it. And I don’t think that will change.

FWIW, the main reason we choose prototype over jQuery here at Zenbe was that jQuery was still pretty wet behind the ears when we started development. Two years ago, it was only just coming on the scene and didn’t have the APIs, community, documentation, or examples, that make it the standout it is today.

Would we make a different decision if we had it to do over again today? I don’t know. The main requirements I had when we picked Prototype was that the library be relatively compact, that it solve basic low-level cross-browser issues, (event model, DOM access, that sort of thing), and that it provide useful enhancements to the language and core APIs - e.g. a good approach to creating OO code structure, decent AJAX support, native object extensions… that sort of thing. Support for widgets and animations, and other “whizzy” UI stuff just wasn’t that important to me. I *knew* we were going to be writing a lot of JS and I wanted to make sure we had a solid basis for that code. Prototype was the obvious choice back then, and as you point out, it may still be today.

Objective-J is an interesting project, but I have my doubts about it’s viability. 280 North has gone to great lengths to build what is essentially a Cocoa emulator on top of JavaScript and the DOM. But unless you’ve got a lot of legacy Obj-C code lying around that you want to run in a browser, there’s very little value in that. Even if you do, I’m not sure how much value there is.

Dojo doesn’t seem to do anything that jQuery can’t, and at the larger file size (and weaker community) I can’t see a reason I’d be using it in the future. I have my hands occupied with ruby microframeworks at the moment (like Camping).
However, one of the libraries I do want to look into more is called Objective-J. It’s made by the guys who created 280 slides (280 North), and their goal in creating the language is to provide application-like power for JavaScript.

If Objective-J proves itself to be a powerhouse for the complex JavaScript apps, this could mean even worse news for Prototype, as the complexity issue seems to be one of their main selling points.

Either way, the future of JavaScript looks bright.

My personal history is mostly with prototype and scriptaculous (thanks to Rails early support of these)…but I have been playing with JQuery a lot lately (mostly thanks to catalyst support)…and I keep thinking about checking out Dojo just to see what it brings to the table…but I haven’t found the time. Would love to hear what people who are doing these type of comparisons think…ie. you!

“most web developers are not looking to create super complex JavaScript applications. Most of the time, JavaScript is used to enhance the user experience, adding fancy bells and whistles to make a website faster, smoother, and more interactive.”

This is very true and the way JQuery uses your current code makes it such a simple process and thus a simple descion in which library to use.

I’ve only just started to scratch the surface of JavaScript and already JQuery will be my Library of choice, you can almost pick it straight up and implement it right away.

Keep up the good posts,

Also, I forgot to mention about CocoaMySQL. As soon as I had to touch a database I remembered; you have to get the beta but it’s the best visual sql client out there (and ha, it’s free)!

Oh, and as far as Quicksilver goes, I’m also pretty basic with it - 98% of the time I use it for opening programs. It’s good for finding/opening folders/files as well by typing (FIN [tab] OF [tab] filename).

I’d love to hear more about your use of Quicksilver. I typically use it just for easy application launching (ie, Ctrl+Space & type app name). I don’t use any of the fancy chain of actions that I’ve heard other people do.