Dec 07 2008

A list of CMS and eCommerce systems that officially support jQuery

Published by Ron Peled under Content Management Systems, Ektron, Joomla, Magento, Web Development, ZenCart, eCommerce

Last updated: December 7th, 2008.

Recently, jQuery - the agile JavaScript Library - has reached a tipping point. Here is a list of CMS and eCommerce systems that our clients are most interested in and their status with regard to jQuery.

Systems where jQuery is officially supported:

1. Microsoft has adopted jQuery and will offer intellisense support in its dominant IDE: Visual Studio 2008.

2. Umbraco - an open source CMS now offers jQuery by default and using jQueryin Umbraco is a matter of adding a simple call in order to include the jQuery files in the page.

3. Drupal - is an open source CMS and Framework CMS, as of version 5 it offers jQuery streight from its core. There are plans to build a centralized jQuery plugin in Drupal version 7.

4. Typo3 - is an open source CMS Framework. Typo3 has a jQuery extension that allows advanced integration with jQuery.

5. DotNetNuke - an open source ASP.NET CMS. Since October 2008 DotNetNuke offers built in jQuery support beginning with version 5.

Systems where jQuery is not supported:

1. Joomla - seems to favor Mootools over jQuery. Here is an article on how to support jQuery within Joomla and avoid conflicts with other libraries.

2. Zend Framework - the leading PHP Framework following the MVC design pattern. A press release was issued in May 2008 announcing Zend Framework and Dojo partnership.

3. Magento Commerce - an open source eCommerce platform that is gaining huge market share in the eCommerce industry. Currently Magento Commerce supports prototype JS library instead of jQuery, but offers ways to integrate jQuery easily.

4. Zen-Cart - an open source eCommerce (competing with Magento). At the moment Zen-Cart is not supporting any JavaScript library in its core.

Other systems and their relationship to jQuery:

1. WordPress - an open source blogging software. Uses jQuery for its core functionality and is avilable for any third party plugin.

2. Ektron CMS400 - Ektron has an enterprise level CMS with advanced content editing features. Oddly enough, Ektron seems to have embedded their own version of jQuery in their code.

While jQuery seems to be favored the favored JavaScript library by many developers, it has yet to be declared as the default one for many projects and systems. I’ll be keeping this list updated in the following months. Let me know if there is a system that interests you and I did not list it here.

One response so far

Nov 03 2008

jQuery Emerges as Most Popular Javascript Library for Web Development

Published by Ron Peled under .NET Framework, AJAX, Web Design, Web Development, Web-based User Interfaces

It seems to be official: jQuery is gaining ground faster than any other JavaScript Library. There may be many reasons but I like to think that jQuery is leading the pack due to its simplicity and relatively small size. Here is what Google Trends is showing us:

Top Reasons for jQuery’s ground gaining:

  • Simplicity.
  • Small in size: only 15K for latest production release after its minified and gzipped.
  • Extendable: pretty big plugin library. Currently showing hundreds of plugins.
  • CSS3 Compliant and one of the first JS Library to use CSS selectors.
  • Handles AJAX very well while avoiding code bloating.
  • Major adoption by ASP.NET developers and teaming up with ASP.NET’s team for improved integration

jQuery Resources:

Other Javascript Libraries:

All these Javascript frameworks provide the basic idea of single developer resource for cross browser and cross platform JavaScript development. Additionally, all make AJAX a little bit easier:

If you know of any additional interesting jQuery Resources, drop me a line. Thanks!

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Sep 05 2008

Joomla vs Ektron

Published by Ron Peled under Content Management Systems, Ektron, Joomla

We have been receiving a lot of comparison inquiries lately and I wanted to put this simple Joomla vs Ektron content management systems comparison table out there. Have in mind that much of the decision of which CMS to choose for your company or organization is usually made way before this comparison since the two systems are different in such a fundamental level. However, this is a comparison of those fundamentals plus some of the ‘interesting’ features.

Joomla vs Ektron

Joomla vs Ektron

Feature/Item Joomla Ektron
License Model Open Source Closed Source, Compiled
Price Free Starts at $15,000
Web Platform PHP ASP.NET 2.0
Database MySQL MS SQL (Express version OK)
Extendability Options Plugins, Components, Mambots. Joomla 1.5 went through significant development that now offers many hook-ups for plugins without hacking any core files. Plugins (Observer Method), Ektron API (via ASP.NET code behind), Extensive Web Services API
SEO Options Search Engine Friendly URLs (Joomla 1.5)
Meta tags controls
Full template overrides, clean HTML		 Search Engine Friendly URLs (CMS400 7.6)
Meta tags controls and consolidation
Content Tagging
Full template overrides, HTML is often not so clean (part issue with .NET as well)
Social Networking None, unless using a third party component or a plugin. Many features built in: Personal profile, personal area, connections between profiles, forums, blogging.

Thoughts?

One response so far