---
date: "2006-12-13T03:34:22Z"
title: YUI and YUI-Ext
---

<p>Scripting has now been available in browsers for over a decade.  The
recent <acronym title='Asychronous Javascript And XML'>AJAX</acronym> craze -- an older, more mature sibling of Microsoft's 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_HTML"><acronym title='Dynamic HTML'>DHTML</acronym></a> -- has spurned the development of countless AJAX and
<acronym title='Document Object Model'>DOM</acronym> platform libraries, each with their own niche.</p>

<p>Even though <a href='http://rubyonrails.com/'>Rails</a> is <em>really</em> partial to <a href='http://prototype.conio.net/'>Prototype</a> and
<a href="http://script.aculo.us/">Script.alculo.us</a>, I decided to spent some time playing with some
of the competitors.  I like the simplicity of <a href="http://moofx.mad4milk.net/">moo.fx</a>, but my
personal favorite at the moment is <a href="http://developers.yahoo.com/yui/">Yahoo User Interface library
(<acronym title='Yahoo! User Interface library'>YUI</acronym>)</a>.  It's <a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php"><acronym title='Berkley Software Distribution'>BSD</acronym>-licensed</a>, documented out the wazoo,
and it's being actively developed and supported by <a href="http://yahoo.com/">Yahoo</a>.  Toss in
<a href="http://www.jackslocum.com/blog/">Jack Slocum's <code>yui-ext</code></a>, and you have an awesome dynamic grid
widget, layout manager, asynchronous animation primitives, and a great
JavaScript-only dialog widget that'll impress anyone (check out the
slick per-block commenting in the <a href="http://www.djangobook.com/">Django Book</a>, for a
rough idea of what you can do with yui-ext).  Not too shabby.  <a href="http://sonjayatandon.com/07-2006/how-to-get-rails-and-the-yahoo-user-interface-yui-to-talk-part-1/">With a
little effort</a>, even Rails can be <a href="http://www.zerosum.org/devblog/?q=node/4">beaten into <acronym title='Yahoo! User Interface library'>YUI</acronym>
submission</a>).  </p>

<p>(By the way, I am not and will never be a fan of AJAX for the sake of
AJAX and at the expense of usability.  But I do think a little bit, used
sparingly, can really spice up a page).</p>

<p>Anyway, expect to see a bit of YUI pizazz around here whenever I finally
get the long, long overdue backend rewrite rolling.</p>