Lately I have been evaluating a few JavaScript based UI libraries for both my projects at work and to use for a new version of the bike climbs site called 39x27.com: it was quite nice to see that almost all component vendors are now embracing, some more than others, JavaScript together with the more traditional Web Controls for ASP.NET Web Forms.
In this post I’m going to briefly cover the reasons why I ended up choosing Wijmo, and then I’m giving a quick introduction on the set of widgets available.
Why Wijmo?
My first, and only strict requirement was that it had to be based on jQuery: everybody in my team knows it, it is the more used JavaScript library, so new developers and contractors coming are likely to know it, and ASP.NET MVC and the ASP.NET Single Page Application depends on it (see, ASP.NET MVC validation, Knockout.js, upshot.js). That excluded libraries like ExtJS.All the buzz lately is about KendoUI, a jQuery-based UI widget library developed by Telerik, so it was the first library I looked at: it’s based on jQuery, and is available also with a OSS license (GPLv3). It has lots of widgets, both for web UI element and for drawing charts and they are developing also some mobile UI controls. And it’s use feels natural, looks like jQueryUI: you create a HTML element, you select it via jQuery and then enhance it via a KendoUI specific JavaScript function.
What I didn’t like is that they reinvented the wheel: one line
