“MooTools 1.2″ book review

MooTools is a very powerful and yet compact JavaScript framework.

An Open Souce project started in 2006 by Valerio Proietti, MooTools has been known to earn over time a reputation in the field of JavaScript frameworks, the scene of a fierce fight with competitors such as jQuery, YUI, Dojo, Prototype, Ext JS and others.

As I am often working with the framework / CMS Joomla, I have found myself to interact with MooTools, as is the framework provided by default. Choice often criticized, but I totally legitimate, although some flexibility in this respect would not be unwelcome.

Especially as Joomla comes with MooTools 1.1, while the latest - and more powerful - version is 1.2.

Having said this, I review the book "MooTools 1.2" published by Packt Publishing, written by Jacob Gube and Garrick Cheung.

As indicated by the subtitle of the book "Learn how to create dynamic, interactive and responsive cross-browser web applications using this popular JavaScript framework", the book is aimed mainly at beginners of the argument, but it requires some knowledge of JavaScript syntax, and how works this client-side programming language.

The reader is first guided to the download, configuration and installation of the framework. You are introduced to the basics of MooTools, comparing with normal JavaScript code written to compare code written using MooTools.

The book explains how you can select any element of an HTML page, and how to select multiple items in one operation, to then manipulate them.

After these basics, we move to the analysis of classes of MooTools. Firstly we talk of the Core: Browsers, $chk, $defined, $pick, $try, $time (), $clear (), $periodical (), $extend (), $merge (), $each, $Random, $splat, $type.

Then are explained the principles for working with events and the other functionalities provided by MooTools Fx class, which allows the animation of objects on a page.

The book explains very clearly how to work using JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and interactions with the Request object (Ajax), and some of the plugins provided by MooTools More (eg Fx.Accordion, Dates, OverText, Drag, Drag.Move ..) and explains how to create your own plugins to extend the capabilities of the framework.

I read this book being a person familiar with MooTools 1.1, and it was enlightening to discover the new features of version 1.2 (which should have been called 2.0, in my opinion).

A book to read, for those not familiar with MooTools and want to start and quickly learn how it works!