which is the most suitable javascript widget libraries for a measurement reporting web application?

Question

I am starting a new web application for reporting measurements to engineers. The main components I need are:

• grids
• charts
• maps

I have investigated the following javascript solutions:

• ext js
• dojo
• jquery

Dojo seems to be a good all-in-one solution but I am wondering why it is not widely used? Which widget libraries are suggested for each one of these components(grids. maps, charts) ?

Answer 1

It typically depends on the nature of your application - is it intranet/enterprise or consumer? High traffic, global websites have a different set of requirements compared to enterprise/intranet based apps, specially from a performance and footprint angle.

Assuming yours is an enterprise/non-consumer-market app, both extjs and Dojo will do well given that you want datagrids and charts THey are similar in their approach to widgets (separation of data and view, encapsulation, widget classes, inheritance etc). I suggest looking at the dojo nightly tests and extjs demos to ensure the library you choose has the features you need. Dojo nightly and demos: http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/dojotoolkit/ extjs: http://dev.sencha.com/deploy/ext-4.0.7-gpl/examples/

extjs is commercially licensed (so it is somewhat more polished) whereas Dojo is full open-source driven by community effort. Dojo is actively being evolved though and dojo 1.7 has some nice enhancements like AMD While there is lot of documentation for Dojo, you should be ready to look at multiple places to get answers - dojocampus, docs, nightly tests, widget source code, and of course, stackoverflow :-) - I have found it fun to learn the whole system and also contribute back to the community, the good thing is the widget system is extensible with many extension points, so you can override and customize what you want.

We use Dojo extensively in many departments in my large enterprise company and it has proved to be a good overall solution. Dojo is also backed and supported by IBM. Also, Sitepen offers commercial support for Dojo and has key dojo committers on its team.

JQuery is great for doing DOM manipulations, transitions etc and is lightweight and fast. Jquery UI offers widgets and there are lot of plugins available - but you will need to figure out the licensing model as plugins are typically separately licensed and also be willing to thoroughly test and modify them/create new plugins/widgets to ensure they fit your need.

Answer 2

http://square.github.com/crossfilter/

Maybe this one? It just went open source some weeks ago.

Answer 3

Another free JavaScript libraries you could use :

Paper.js

Raphael.js

Both of them should provide enough functionnalities for your needs.