The Ultimate JavaScript Tool Box
06
Nov . 2006
It occurred to me as I while helping some of my students with their Interactive Design projects that it would be really great to have a comprehensive list of the most useful JavaScript libraries and utilities that would make building advanced interfaces a snap. So here are my personal favorites. There are many more great libraries and tool out there I am not listing, either because I just overlooked them, or because I think there is a better alternative. If you feel I’ve missed something here, I’d love to hear your suggestions.
The Essentials
- Prototype: First on the list for good reason. It’s a staple library on which so many other libraries are built. Development utilities and nice Ajax handling
- Scriptaculous: Effects galore. A bit on the heavy side, but can be worth it for the right use. A piece of cake to use lots of powerful features.
- Lightbox: A simple way of presenting photos and HTML chunks in modal windows, dimming the background of the page.
- Really easy field validation with Prototype: The name says it all
- Tabifier: A JavaScript implementation of the card stack design pattern. Show and hide divs, packing a lot of information into a relatively small area with comfort.
- Fade Anything Technique: Popularized by 37signals, a great way to tell users about errors or other critical feedback.
- New Window Link: A nice way to offer users the ability to launch a link in the same window, or spawn a new window.
- Sweet Titles: A beautiful, souped up alternative to the plain ol’ title attribute display.
- SWFObject: Detect the Flash player then embed a SWF in your page following web standards
- Tiny MCE: Turn any textarea into a WYSIWYG editor. Perfect for your next CMS or web app
The Runners Up
- Yahoo! UI Library: Many handy utilities for some advanced interface design patterns like accordion menus.
- Moo.fx: This may soon replace Scriptaculous as the de facto effects library because of its slim file size, it just hasn’t quite caught up with the documentation yet.
Did I miss any?
2 Responses to “The Ultimate JavaScript Tool Box”
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Wow, you give the nod to Scriptaculous but not to Moo.FX (or more properly now-a-days, Mootools) because of a lack of documentation? Time to check out:
http://docs.mootools.net/files/Moo-js.html
The Fx.Styles effect is worthy of a lot of attention.
November 14th, 2006 at 11:58 amI’d not seen the Mootools documentation. You are right, they’ve really done a nice job of diminishing the learning curve with some comprehensive explanations of each feature. It’s great that there is so much competition right now to be the definitive JS library/framework, because the result is leaner, more flexible code without sacrificing functionality.
Thanks for the heads up, Jeffrey.
November 14th, 2006 at 12:18 pm