Problems
Unlike other JavaScript libraries like jQuery, Prototype extends the DOM, but there are plans to change this in the next major version of the library.
In April 2010, blogger Juriy 'kangax' Zaytsev (of Prototype Core) described at length the problems that can follow from adding new methods and properties to the objects defined by the W3C DOM. These ideas echo thoughts published in March 2010 by Yahoo! developer Nicholas C. Zakas They have been summarised as follows
- Cross browser issues: host objects have no rules, IE DOM is a mess, etc.
- Chance of name collisions
- Performance overheads
By 2008, specific issues with using DOM-extension methods in older versions of Prototype, combined with newer versions of current browsers, were already being documented. Rather than adding new methods and properties to pre-existing 'host' DOM objects such as Element, like element.hide, the solution to these issues is to provide wrapper objects around these host objects and implement the new methods on these. jQuery is such a wrapper object in the library of that name.
It is now widely expected that the majority of these ideas and issues will be addressed in the release of Prototype 2.0, but Prototype developers will have to learn to work with an altered syntax, and much existing Prototype code will become outdated.
Read more about this topic: Prototype Java Script Framework
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