On Wed, 5 Nov 2008, Yitzchak Schaffer wrote:

> Coders:
>
> Have you had any successful experiences with trees in JS frameworks? I'm 
> trying to find one for the site I'm building, in order to "entree" the 
> results of an API search; here's what I've found:

Not trees specifically, but I'm willing to comment on JS toolkits.


[trimmed]

> Ext
> http://extjs.com/deploy/dev/examples/tree/reorder.html
> the JS files are pretty hefty (smallest possible arrangement looked like 
> 180k)

I've been lurking on the ExtJS lists for more than a year now, and 
although I will admit the framework is _very_ powerful, they seem focused 
more on 'web applications' than just adding a single widget to an existing 
web page.

I basically gave up on them when the ExtJS 2.0 came out, and they switched 
to GPL3, and refused to answer questions on the forum of how we should 
apply it.  (there was concern that the way it was worded, we'd have to 
reveal our backend code to support the web application, but we couldn't 
get a cleancut yes or no answer, and we couldn't get an answer about why 
it wasn't being released as LGPL)

Also, because of how they handle rendering elements (divs within divs 
within divs), I'm not sure how well it'd degrade.  In most cases, it 
wouldn't, as they assume almost everything is drawn by JS.

(I have other issues, but probably just because it's the one I'm most 
familiar with -- I'd probably be just as frustrated with whatever toolkit 
I next select to try to re-implement my project in)


> jQuery
> http://docs.jquery.com/UI/Tree
> appears abandoned
> other than that, I found a couple of plugins, but nothing too 
> confidence-inspiring.

As has already been mentioned -- jQuery is _not_ dead, but there's also a 
plugin for a more fully featured tree:

 	http://bassistance.de/jquery-plugins/jquery-plugin-treeview/



Also, I've never used it, but Dojo has a tree widget, too:

 	http://dojotoolkit.org/book/dojo-book-0-9/part-2-dijit/advanced-editing-and-display/tree
 	http://dojotoolkit.org/2008/02/24/dijit-tree-and-dojo-data-dojo-1-1-model

-----
Joe Hourcle


(insert disclaimer here about these being my own opinions, and do not 
necessarily reflect the opinions of my employeer or my place of work)