Backbone.js vs. JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit vs. Polymer vs. Velocity.js Comparison Chart

Backbone.js gives structure to web applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing API over a RESTful JSON interface. When working on a web application that involves a lot of JavaScript, one of the first things you learn is to stop tying your data to the DOM. It's all too easy to create JavaScript applications that end up as tangled piles of jQuery selectors and callbacks, all trying frantically to keep data in sync between the HTML UI, your JavaScript logic, and the database on your server. For rich client-side applications, a more structured approach is often helpful. With Backbone, you represent your data as Models, which can be created, validated, destroyed, and saved to the server.

The Polymer library provides a set of features for creating custom elements. These features are designed to make it easier and faster to make custom elements that work like standard DOM elements. Similar to standard DOM elements, Polymer elements can be instantiated using a constructor or document creation element, configured using attributes or properties, populated with internal DOM inside each instance, responsive to property and attribute changes, styled with internal defaults or externally, and responsive to methods that manipulate its internal state. Registering an element associates a class with a custom element name. The element provides callbacks to manage its lifecycle. Polymer also lets you declare properties, to integrate your element's property API with the Polymer data system. Shadow DOM provides a local, encapsulated DOM tree for your element. Polymer can automatically create and populate a shadow tree for your element from a DOM template.