Zepto.js, a jQuery-compatible mobile JavaScript framework in 2K (presentation)

Zepto.js is a JavaScript framework for mobile apps and sites, with a jQuery-compatible syntax (lots of the jQuery API is supported!). The goal is have a 2k library that handles most basic drudge work with a nice API that you might already know so you can concentrate on getting stuff done.

Here’s my presentation from the October 27, 2010 vienna.js meetup!

Links from the presentation:

• Zepto.js mobile JavaScript framework
• Zepto.js project on GitHub
• Aerogel Wikipedia article
• Cute cat picture*

Interesting numbers from the article (library sizes in bytes):

jQuery 1.4.3: 180,477 uncompressed, 77,745 minified, 26,711 minified and gzipped
Prototype 1.7_rc3: 160,122 uncompressed, 86,919 minified, 26,617 minified and gzipped
Zepto.js (2010/10/27): 8,788 uncompressed, 5,816 minified, 2,368 minified and gzipped

These numbers are not strictly comparable, as jQuery and Prototype offer features that are not in Zepto.js, and are not design goals of Zepto.js. But what it adds up to is that Zepto.js is about 10 times smaller than jQuery or Prototype, yet provides a large subset of the features those libraries offer, thanks to all the goodness of advanced JavaScript and new DOM features in mobile WebKit browsers.**

You can also download the slides (PDF, 12MB).

Please do have fun with Zepto and create awesome mobile sites with it (I hear it works great for browser extensions for Chrome and Safari, too!). And, of course, please contribute back! Patches, documentation, demos—everything is very welcome!

Want to hear more about Zepto.js? Check out my Interview on The Changelog show.

Big shout out to Samo Korošec for designing the Zepto.js logo and beta web site! Your mad design skillz rule!

*every presentation needs at least one picture of cute cats
**Prototype is now smaller then jQuery, when did that happen??