Prototype

About two and a half weeks ago I wrote about jQuery being underutilized. That's nothing compared to Spellify, the absolutely perfect and horrendous example of how grossly unutilized Prototype is. Read on.

As beginners, people who write Ajax applications (for the first time) tend to blindly slap on the Prototype JavaScript framework because of its fame and popularity. What then follows is the usual complaining on Prototype's size (over 60 kilobytes).

The recent Ajaxian post on Prototype mentions how most people argue Prototype's badness. The first point is the most common: breaking the for...in loop.

I'm working on a Ribbon component that utilizes Prototype. The Ribbon I'm referring here is the Ribbon UI in Office 2007. Toolbars are passé.
Here is a highlight on the key features of the Ribbon component:

• Multiple tabs, multiple groups
• Collapsible
• Stickybar that is persistent to the left (like the "Quick Access Toolbar" in Office), and a specific Help button
• Detects mouse wheel scrolling and switches tabs
• Supports different modes where different tabs are available

I was experimenting with Prototype's AJAX call, but with the option asynchronous: false. It was buggy under Internet Explorer, although I never expected anything to work under Internet Explorer anyway.

Either Prototype never finished the XMLHttpRequest, or Prototype didn't call the function it was supposed to after the request.

I have written some code for Prototype. Prototype can toggle, show, hide, and remove elements (these are just one of the many features Prototype can do to elements).

I went even further: making it possible to disable, enable (if it's already disabled), and toggle disable elements. This is the code. (It's under the same MIT-style license as Prototype)