In my attempt to use MooTools on new projects with other developers, share MooTools with other developers, or just releasing a MooTools class; I’ve come across the same complaints about this incredible framework.
MooTools Complaints
Poor Documentation
While its true MooTools is poorly documented compared to other frameworks it is still worth learning and with people like Aaron Newton or David Walsh. The information to learn it is there its just not necessarily on the MooTools site.
Poor Demos
Not much I can say about this but the demo library on MooTools.net was narrow at best. Hopefully they plan to improve this officially in the future. For now though the web community is really pitching in.
No Official Plugin Library
MooTools admits this is a lacking feature in the community of the framework and is setting out to release the Forge with MooTools 2
The Learning Curve
It’s true MooTools is a bit tougher to learn then jQuery but you will be a better programmer for it. It is a very robust framework with a huge potential and plenty of power as it is now.
Backwards Compatibility
A bunch of developers I had converted to MooTools was during 1.11. And when MooTools release 1.2. It broke a lot of their code even things they had copied straight from the MooTools demos. MooTools has learned from this mistake and has promised all future releases will be backwards compatible.
No UI Library
I’ve never really been to hurt about this myself as I feel things like jQuery’s UI library are complete overkill when all you need is progress bar. Either way MooTools is developing a UI library called MooTools ART
Plugins
This is a large misconception. I’ve been hard pressed to find a plugin that someone hasn’t written or translated to MooTools.
The Point
The point of this is not to trash MooTools but to let people know the MooTools team is hard at work fixing a lot of these complaints. I’ve seen jQuery gaining serious ground since its release for its community and small learning curve. I’m a huge fan of MooTools and its object oriented approach. I wanted to clear things up on what MooTools is doing about them. Learn MooTools. It’s an incredible framework.