That's a great writeup. I'd have to say that it makes a lot of sense. -----Original Message----- From: jquery-en@googlegroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt Kruse Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 12:46 PM To: jQuery (English) Subject: [jQuery] Re: CNN and Apple Choose Prototype. Why?
On Jun 14, 12:17 pm, "Glen Lipka" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 1. A plugin repository that is completely coordinated. Like WordPress > Themes or plugins. It needs to have: > ... I still believe that the plugins approach being taken right now is going to put jQuery in jeopardy as the library of choice going forward. It could end up similar to Perl, where there is a module to do just about everything, and yet it's impossible for new users to figure out which modules they should use (there might be 10 to do the same task), what dependencies it has, etc. IMO, the core jQuery team needs to lay out a roadmap for official plugins. The form plugin is great, but it's main focus is ajax. Shouldn't there be a standard form plugin that just deals with form inputs, etc? (I'm working on one for my own use). The core team should lay out which plugins should be in the core set, what they should each do, and then have people work on them to the specs. We would then have a set of standard, official plugins that do the most common tasks. The features and functionality of these core plugins would not be up to a random developer who creates them, but decided on by the core jQuery team. They need to be designed and cohesive from the start, rather than simply selecting the best user- created plugins that are submitted. These plugins then need to be made quite prominent on the site so everyone knows exactly what they should grab if they want to work with form inputs, for example. No confusion, no need for multiple libs that accomplish the same task, etc. Without doing this, I really fear that jQuery will go down the road of massive plugin confusion. Because of the self-imposed core filesize restriction, the dependency on plugins will only increase. And since most users will need to use plugins, the "look and feel/API" of jQuery to them will in large part be that of the plugins they choose, which leaves jQuery's fate up to random developers creating random plugins. Not so good, IMO. Matt Kruse
