YUI was released the same year as jQuery. Care to qualify that a bit? Edit: Had ...

debacle · on April 2, 2012

YUI was more extensible, followed (mostly) good JavaScript patterns (making heavy use of the module pattern), had relatively good cross-platform support and an easy to understand interface.

To top it off, the documentation was top notch.

jmathai · on April 3, 2012

> To top it off, the documentation was top notch.

Serious? That's what drove me away. It might have been top notch academically but for real life use I found it painful to get answers and simple code problems fixed.

digamber_kamat · on April 3, 2012

That is not true. YUI community is pretty vibrant and the developers go out of the way to help you.

jmathai · on April 4, 2012

Here's an example.

The top hit on Google for "make an ajax request with (YUI|jquery)" the documentation page is the first hit.

YUI's page is here, the line of code to make the request is well below the fold. http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/connection/

JQuery's page has it listed immediately. In fact, 2 variants above the fold. http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.ajax/

I'm not saying one is right and another is wrong. I'm just saying jQuery's gets more adoption. It's easier and people tend to like that.

I don't, for example, understand why I have to scroll past the YUI dependency configurator to get to the syntax I'm looking for.

debacle · on April 4, 2012

You're looking at the current version of the documentation. jQuery didn't have nearly as good documentation five years ago, and YUI's was much better than it is today (I think YUI3 is a step back for Yahoo).

jmathai · on April 12, 2012

So jQuery's has gotten better and YUI's has gotten worse?

I just know that when I did try it (2009) I felt the same as I do today.

thezilch · on April 2, 2012

At the time and for at least a year following...

  1. Yahoo hosted scripts, including roll-ups
  2. UI components and styles
  3. The best documented library, both outside and inside thde code, hands down
  4. More feature complete (ex. one I can recall off the top of my head, form handling of upload inputs didn't exist in jquery, and extending jquery internals was/is a nightmare in comparison)
  5. The best documentation, hands down
  6. Yahoo hosted scripts, including roll-ups
  7. The best documentation

jquery has come a long way with documentation, but then YUI has evolved even further in becoming a modular library.