11 Commonly used AJAX Frameworks

There are hundreds of AJAX Frameworks available. Most commonly used frameworks are jQuery, MooTools, Prototype, ASP.NET AJAX, Apache Wicket, Dojo Toolkit, DWR (Direct Web Remoting), Spry Framework, YUI (Yahoo User Interface) and Google Web Toolkit.

Here is a small description of these frameworks:

1. jQuery:  The jQuery library is providing many easy to use functions and methods to make rich applications. These functions are very easy to learn and even a designer can learn it fast. Due to these features jQuery is very popular and in high demand among the developers. You can use jQuery in all the web based applications irrespective of the technology.

2. MooTools: MooTools (My Object-Oriented Tools) is a lightweight, object-oriented, JavaScript framework. It is released under the free, open-source MIT License. It is used on more than 5% of all websites, and is one of the most popular JavaScript libraries.

3. Prototype: Prototype is a JavaScript Framework that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications. It features a unique, easy-to-use toolkit for class-driven development and the nicest Ajax library around, Prototype is quickly becoming the codebase of choice for web application developers everywhere.

4. ASP.NET AJAX: The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit is an open-source project built on top of the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX framework. It is a joint effort between Microsoft and the ASP.NET AJAX community that provides a powerful infrastructure to write reusable, customizable and extensible ASP.NET AJAX extenders and controls, as well as a rich array of controls that can be used out of the box to create an interactive web experience.

5. Apache Wicket: Apache Wicket, commonly referred to as Wicket, is a lightweight component-based web application framework for the Java programming language conceptually similar to JavaServer Faces and Tapestry.

6. Dojo Tookit: Dojo Toolkit is an open source modular JavaScript library (or more specifically JavaScript toolkit) designed to ease the rapid development of cross-platform, JavaScript/Ajax-based applications and web sites.

7. DWR (Direct Web Remoting): DWR is a Java library that enables Java on the server and JavaScript in a browser to interact and call each other as simply as possible.

8. Spry Framework: The Spry Framework is an open source Ajax framework developed by Adobe Systems which is used in the construction of Rich Internet Applications. Unlike other pure JavaScript frameworks such as the Dojo Toolkit and Prototype, Spry is geared towards web designers, not web developers.

9. YUI (Yahoo User Interface) Library: It is a set of utilities and controls, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and Ajax BSD.

10. Google Web Toolkit: Google Web Toolkit is an open source set of tools that allows web developers to create and maintain complex JavaScript front-end applications in Java. Other than a few native libraries, everything is Java source that can be built on any supported platform with the included GWT Ant build files. It is licensed under the Apache License version 2.0.

11. ZK Framework: ZK is an open-source Ajax Web application framework, written in Java, that enables creation of rich graphical user interfaces for Web applications without the application developer having to write JavaScript and with little required programming knowledge.