The context is that I don't want to use Zend MVC - controllers, helpers, decorators etc - that's overkill for what I am writing.

I've scoured the jQuery site plugins section and these issues bother me most: 

1. I have to **search a lot** for plugins - it is tedious.
2. I have to check **dependencies** with jQuery versions. Thankfully I decided to stick with only jQuery or noConflict() would have driven me crazy.
3. I have to hook-up **all the id's and names of form elements** across **HTML+CSS+JQuery** through Controllers, Views etc.  

And all this because there is no other **simpler PHP wrapper over jQuery plugins** than ZendX\_JQuery - and plugins is where the attractive scripts and effects are.
4. Writing a **in-house replacement to ZendX\_JQuery** will be a huge task in itself. But if you have to wrap third party jQuery plugins in PHP and maintain the thing it is full time job in itself.

So I want to know if Zend\_Dojo is much easier than ZendX\_JQuery. I'm asking before trying out because I'd have to spend a couple more days installing, configuring and testing all the standard Dojo controls and then I can decide. All that's tedious for a rather simple app which **may** grow later on.

The alternative would be a "jQuery-inside" PHP widget library that is stable and will work for a year without being broken or upgraded.

Something like **GWT or ZK or ASP.Net** where you don't have to do **low-level HTML+jQuery coding and hand-tweaking for every page** with all the ajax controls and form elements.

Or should I **just drop an MVC framework altogether and replace it with a custom set of scripts** only **using Zend components where necessary** - like Zend\_Validate, Zend\_Form etc.

I've been working on desktop apps for some time and the switch to AJAX + MVC + Zend is proving a bit too unwieldy, especially given the abundance of design patterns in Zend MVC.