Hi Gbot,
Welcome to the jQuery community. I don't think it's necessary to debate
the merits of the two libs as both provide excellent capabilities.
What is important, if you want to be successful, is that you clear your
mind of the "Mootools way" while you're trying to learn jQuery. To be
clear, I'm not telling you to drop MooTools. I'm explicitly saying that
jQuery's coding style is different and you need to think in terms of
jQuery during the learning process.
I would suggest a couple of links:
http://docs.jquery.com/Main_Page
http://learningjquery.com
http://nettuts.com/articles/web-roundups/jquery-for-absolute-beginners-video-series/
http://nettuts.com/freebies/cheat-sheets/jquery-cheat-sheet/
I'd also suggest getting either books:
Learning jQuery
jQuery In Action
Both are by jQuery project team members and are excellent resources.
The fact that you have worked in another library will actually be good
for you and I anticipate you being able to hit the ground running. The
main thing is to be objective when learning jQuery. One of the biggest
hurdles I see for people coming from other frameworks is that they want
to do things like they did in the other library.
In terms of effects and controls, I urge you to check out jQuery UI
(http://ui.jquery.com). I think you'll be pleasantly surprised as to
what's available.
Feel free to ask plenty of questions. We have, IMO, the best community
around and we're here to help.
Also, ping the #jquery channel on Freenode if you want more immediate
assistance.
Rey
jQuery Project
gbot wrote:
Hi,
I've been a fan of Mootools for quite a while now, but I've got a
project coming up very soon that must be done in jQuery - can anyone
point me to any tutorials or ideally a cheat sheet that can help me
learn the differences between Mootools and jQuery? Any info/tuts/blog
posts on switching from Mootools over to jQuery would be greatly
appreciated - I need to learn it fast!
(of course, I'm going to hammer the jQuery site docs etc and use good
old google, but I just thought someone here might be able to help me
out as I'm in a real hurry!)
Any assistance appreciated.
(I make the following comments without really knowing much about
jQuery, so I apologise if I'm mis-informed - if anyone feels like
putting me straight - then please do so)
I've been using Mootools for quite a while now, and I feel pretty
confident coding with it.
When I initially evaluated the major js frameworks (over a year ago
now) it was a very close call for me between Mootools and jQuery. I
went with Mootools for a number of reasons -- like the modularity of
the core, smaller file size and faster performance for effects --
though I appreciate that things have changed since then and these may
no longer apply.
From what I can see jQuery looks a little bit more straightforward to
code, although it seems to me that Mootools does more "out of the box"
- a lot of stuff I can write in Mootools in a few lines of code (using
the core) seems to require additional classes or plug ins with jQuery
- is that a fair statement?
There's no doubt jQuery is WAY more widely used and is being more
actively developed (which counts for a lot, of course), so I'm
wondering if I should switch permanently.
I'm sure this has been debated widely and vigorously, but at the
current time (i.e. current version of jQuery vs Mootools 1.2.1) - what
are the main differences between them? Are there any significant
things that jQuery can't do?
Thanks in advance for any assistance and comment.
