My Blog - Prototype tablekit beats jQuery tablesorter by a mile
Date published: Sat. 6 Jun. 2009 07:14:33 PMSince I'm trying to become a better programmer, I'm updating my web site for a better user experience. I originally built the pictures and recipes pages with SQL-based sorts, so that the user would click on a link that would reload the page with results sorted by the relevant column.
Since going to work on Tavawava, I've learned how to do this with Javascript. I use the Prototype library there and when I needed to add sort functionality, I found the excellent TableKit plugin. It's easy to learn and quickly implements into almost any page (just add a class to any table that you want sorted, and it automatically picks up the fact that you want it sorted), and there are a lot of examples of usage on the web site.
Today when I decided to add the same functionality to curtisgibby.com, I started looking for something that would do the same thing under jQuery, because that's the Javascript library I had started doing some basic javascript/AJAX stuff with, several months ago. Everybody online pointed to Tablesorter, so I assumed that it would be as simple and enjoyable to work with as TableKit. I was wrong.
With Tablesorter, I was able to get some functionality working pretty quickly, but I didn't like how you had to specifically add a javascript call to document.ready() and ask for alternating colors, both of which automatically happen with TableKit. The online documentation was confusing and skimpy. During my coding process, I changed something that broke the sorting functionality. The zebra striping still worked, but nothing I did brought back the sort.
Frustrated, I turned to TableKit, even though I'd never used Prototype on my web site. I downloaded Prototype and TableKit and had them sorting my table within 5 minutes. Now I'm thinking of using Prototype throughout curtisgibby.com
Overall, Prototype tablekit beats jQuery tablesorter by a mile.
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