I’ve been using prototype js framework to create UI and pull data from ms sql 2000 server. First when I started a project I’m on right now, I used asp.net 2005 visual studio and all asp.net web controllers to create UI. However, fast enough I got to change one part of the page in terms of UI to plain HTML elements with javascript. The reason was that I was not able to do what I wanted to do basically. I can’t recall what I wanted to do now though…
Anyhow I ended up rewriting the whole UI logic using plain XHTML, CSS, javascript, and prototype framework. This prototype framework has been amazing. It made javascript development leap to next level with intuitive ways of writing syntax, very useful deligation functions such as Function.bind and Function.bindAsEventListener, adn so on. Also a way to find event triggering element is using Event.findElement(tagName). With this API, you can find an event source element easily, which could be very useful when you don’t want to set each element onclick event or mouseout event under one parent element such as DIV.
Also another good thing about prototype framework is that you can learn a new syntax by looking at the source. I thought I knew all ways of writing js syntax. I was totally wrong. It’s amazingly well built framework that I recommend to everyone who is already doing js development or interested in learning prototype.