We're all familiar with the names: YUI, Prototype, Dojo, JQuery, MochiKit, Tibco, Backbase, and many more. Some are free; some aren't. Some are well documented; many more aren't documented at all. Some support all the browsers you care about; some don't. Some are accessible and work well with assistive technologies; many don't. Some are spry and fast; some are heavy and slow.

What all the prominent JavaScript libraries have in common is that they promise to save you time in building rich internet applications by offloading some of the heavy lifting that characterizes development in the browser. However, libraries on the client-side of the browser-server divide are different than libraries in other software development environments. Client-side libraries are transmitted to the client with each page, loaded and processed with each page, and their ability to render UI is throttled by a slow, inconsistent DOM API that is wildly suboptimal when it comes to performance.

We pay a big price as developers for the benefits we gain from deploying our apps instantly and ubiquitously on the web. JavaScript libraries don't change that fundamental paradigm...at best, they make the paradigm a little less idiosyncratic. But that normalization, too, comes at a price. Choosing a frontend library for JavaScript and CSS has become a key decision point early in the lifecycle of web development projects. Choosing when to use the library and when to build custom code and widgets has become an important decision point later in the process.

In this session, we'll look at how best to assess the value proposition of libraries with respect to specific projects and how to make good long-term decisions about how those libraries should be deployed. You'll leave this session with a better idea of how libraries work both for and against you and what the intrinsic compromises are when using library code versus "roll-your-own" solutions.

Speaker Bio: Eric Miraglia has been authoring social web applications since 1995, when he began developing interactive writing spaces for universities; his Speakeasy Studio & Cafe as used by more than 100 universities between 1997 and 2004. Since 2003, Eric has been a part of Yahoo's web development community. In 2005, he joined the newly formed YUI team where he serves as an engineering manager. In a few short years, YUI has come to underpin some of the most trafficked websites in the world, including among many others Yahoo's front page, Yahoo Mail, My Yahoo, and Yahoo Finance properties. Eric has led the effort to make YUI the best-documented open-source JavaScript library and founded the YUI Theater to help provide worldwide access to many of the great events and speakers who come to Yahoo from around the world of web development.

Eric Miraglia's last AJAXWorld presentation was streamed by more than
100,000 SYS-CON.TV viewers

The world’s leading Rich Internet Applications & Web 2.0 event is expected to attract more than 1,000 i-technology developers. AJAXWorld grew from a single track, one-day seminar, less than a year ago, into a four-day international conference & expo with more than 150 sessions delivered in ten simultaneous tracks, by more than 150 faculty members.

Track 01: Rich Internet Applications
Track 02: Web 2.0 Enterprise Mashups
Track 03: Enterprise AJAX Applications
Track 04: RIA Frameworks & Toolkits
Track 05: Security in RIA Applications
Track 06: Server-Side AJAX
Track 07: iPhone AJAX Applications
Track 09: Bleeding-Edge AJAX Applications
Track 10: Diamond Track

The conference now includes the world famous AJAXWorld University's AJAX Developer Bootcamp, OpenLaszlo Track and Adobe Flex 3 Developer Bootcamp. This year’s AJAXWorld Expo Floor is expected to display bleeding edge RIA technologies from more than 75 leading AJAX vendors.

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• AJAX Lowers Yahoo! Page Views, Eric Miraglia Explains Why That's Good