When comparing Rivets vs CanJS, the Slant community recommends Rivets for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript libraries for building a UI?” Rivets is ranked 6th while CanJS is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Rivets is:
Rivets takes DOM element as input, which has special attributes prefixed with 'rv-'. So you may declare DOM element in whatever language you like, even in HTML.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Doesn't require special DOM declaration syntax like JSX
Rivets takes DOM element as input, which has special attributes prefixed with 'rv-'. So you may declare DOM element in whatever language you like, even in HTML.
Pro Great browser support
CanJS supports all modern browsers and IE9+.
Pro CanJS can be used with any other library
CanJS is a collection of individual libraries, each separately available as npm packages. It's easy to use just what you need.
Pro Real time support
CanJS's model layer (can-connect), support real-time updates to lists without adding any additional code.
Cons
Con Seems to be abandoned
No new commits have been pushed since March 2015.