MooTools team suprised us by releasing 1.3 beta. One of the most notable features was Slick – very fast selector engine. It does not use MooTools code, so finally we can use it without attaching whole MooTools Core. On other side, as everybody knows, jQuery seems to have fastest selector engine among JavaScript libraries – SizzleJS . So include SizzleJS or Slick? Check our benchmarks and decide yourself.

We prepared two tests. One for MooTools 1.3 beta 1.1 and one for jQuery 1.4.3 pre. Mootools uses Slick and jQuery SizzleJS selector engine. Tests are run selector by selector, each selector is used 50 times. You may run tests more than once. Minimum, maximum and average time will be shown. Tests are run against a copy of CSS3 Selectors W3C Specification.

You can change mentioned parameters. Thanks to jsFiddle you just change JS or HTML source and click on the Result tab.

Slick benchmark:

SizzleJS benchmark:

Well, as you see jQuery still wins in this area.

Verdict

Stay with jQuery but don’t underestimate Slick. It is almost as fast as Sizzle. And you won’t find anything better to create pseudo-selectors and reversed combinators.

You may download and build Slick from GitHub.