> JQuery, Prototype, and MooTools Benchmark - SlickSpeed

Monday, January 28th, 2008

Introduction

Before I even start, let me state that I’m a JQuery fan. Ever since I’ve started with JavaScript frameworks I’ve weighed the pros and cons, and trust me there are a lot. You’ll always find people arguing Prototype, JQuery or MooTools. I went with JQuery because it could do all that I wanted with the least amount of bloat. I’m sorry, Prototype may do a hell of a lot, but I don’t think that I could make enough use or that 100 KB to justify it. Plus, Prototype can’t even handle basics on its own without having to piggy back off of script.aculo.us and it’s effects library.

Speed

Now with every new version of a Framework that comes out, this argument comes up again and again. Finally, we have something to put the arguments to rest.

slickspeed

In my personal testing, I’ve found that JQuery 1.21 leads the pack, but only in Internet Explorer. In Firefox it comes in dead last. Does this discourage me? Maybe a lil’ bit. Am I going to stop using JQuery and switch to Prototype? I think not.

What Do You Need?

It all depends on your uses for said framework. From the looks of it, Mootools looks more like a full fledged programming language. With all the definitions of new objects, etc. If, for some reason I’m needing to build an application in JavaScript then I’ll revisit it. But until now, the most JavaScript that I’ll be doing is so simple effects on elements (shows, hides, slides, class changes, etc) and a couple Ajax requests.

For this I don’t think I should suffer the 120 KB that Prototype has to offer, even though it’s blazing fast in Firefox. With that said, even if I hate Internet Explorer, it is still, by far, the most popular browser out there. So I take comfort in the fact that the majority of my audience is getting the speed benefits of JQuery.

Popularity: 49%

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  9 Responses to “JQuery, Prototype, and MooTools Benchmark - SlickSpeed”


  1. Well since I love Firefox so much and do not even use Internet Explorer any more I guess I will not get the benefits of JQuery.

    Lulugal11, on January 29th, 2008 at 6:25 am

  2. You mean the unnoticeable few millisecond delay when using jQuery on Firefox? Yeah, like that’s a real big deal breaker huh?

    Dennison Uy - Graphic Designer, on February 1st, 2008 at 12:22 am

  3. Hey I’m with you on that one, but many people use that as a deal breaker when choosing a javascript framework.

    Baz L, on February 2nd, 2008 at 4:49 pm

  4. Hi, Your article was accepted in the First Carnival of Tech at http://www.technologymatter.com/2008/02/first-carnival-of-tech.html
    Please vote for it on social bookmarking sites or comment about it in your blog!

    Thanks!

    bennie, on February 7th, 2008 at 5:06 pm

  5. Mootools rocks, every time, in every browser. I love their code, the way their website shows demos upfront.

    Try getting that on jQuery’s website. And jQuery is usually the slowest on every browser for me. Their demos are very hard to come by.

    Here’s an example of the box functions:

    Moo: http://www.digitalia.be/software/slimbox
    jQ: http://jquery.com/demo/thickbox/
    Proto: http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/

    The “SlimBox” with Mootools framework is easily the smallest of them all. Read the Features section on Slimbox page for a comparison with Prototype/Scriptaculous based thing.

    Shanx, on February 12th, 2008 at 10:20 am

  6. I did a speed comparison with slickspeed under various browsers and OSs

    http://blog.creonfx.com/javascript/dojo-vs-jquery-vs-mootools-vs-prototype-performance-comparison

    Peter Velichkov, on February 25th, 2008 at 7:17 am

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