Top Ten Most Popular Javascript Libraries

Any skilled web developer needs to be acquainted with a number of JavaScript libraries. It has become an indispensable part of developing web pages, web sites, and web applications. Whether it be for personal use or professional, whether you are just starting out or are an experienced developer, as a web developer it is absolutely essential to stay up to date with the latest technologies including the latest JavaScript libraries and frameworks. Often times the hardest part is determining what framework to use to meet your needs. This post will help summarize some of the most popular Javascript libraries that are currently being talked about and have a lot of momentum behind them.

10

ExtJS

http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs

Current version: 4.1.1 (July 2012)

Ext JS features plugin-free charting, numerous modern UI widgets, cross platform browser compatibility, and automated optimization with Sencha SDK Tools.

9

UIZE

http://www.uize.com/

UIZE is a JavaScript framework that offers dozens of built-in widgets. It combines numerous amazing effects and features to enable rapid, powerful development. Some of the built-in widgets include a progress bar, a data picker, table sorter, and color picker.

8

YUI Library

http://yuilibrary.com/

Current version: 3.7.3 (October 16, 2012)

YUI is JavaScript and CSS library for building rich interactive web applications.

7

Node.js

http://nodejs.org/

Current version: 0.8.12 (October 12, 2012)

Node.js is based upon Chrome’s JavaScript runtime. It enables developers to build fast, scaleable network applications. Node.js using a non-blocking asynchronous event driven IO, which makes it lightweight and efficient. It is perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

6

Archetype

http://archetypejs.org/

Archetype is a JavaScript framework and AJAX application that enables developers to use JavaScript for light to heavy client side development. Archetype is modular in the sense it can be used for just some of its functionality. Archetype shares a lot in common with the Prototype framework. Archetype has a built-in dependency management system, which initializes needed components dynamically for particular web pages.

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5

KineticJS

www.kineticjs.com/

Current version: 4.04

KineticJS is a HTML 5 Canvas JavaScript framework. KineticJS makes it easy to draw things on the stage and add event listeners to them, move them, scale them, and rotate them independently of other shapes.

4

Dojo Toolkit

http://dojotoolkit.org/

Current version: 1.8.1

Dojo Toolkit was designed to save time and to scale with any development project. Dojo Toolkit works equally as well for small personal projects or for enterprise development.

3

Prototype

http://www.prototypejs.org/

Current version: 1.7.1 (June 5, 2012)

Prototype is quickly becoming one of the most widely used JavaScript frameworks available. The ultimate goal of Prototype is to ease the development of dynamic web applications. Adopted by a number of big media companies and organizations, Prototype allows for the rapid development of complex web applications.

2

MooTools

http://mootools.net/

Current version: 1.4.5

MooTools is a compact, modular, Object-Oriented JavaScript framework used for intermediate to advanced JavaScript development. By using MooTools it is easy to write powerful, cross-browser, code in its elegant style.

1

JQuery

http://jquery.com/

Current version: 1.8.2

JQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript library to aid in the traversing of HTML documents, event handling, animation, and AJAX interactions for rapid web development. Without a doubt, JQuery continues to be one of the most popular JavaScript libraries around. It is used by thousands of websites from around the world.

All of the JavaScript frameworks and libraries featured in this article are valuable and worth knowing about. For any given project, you may find that one framework or library suites the job better than another framework or library. Sometimes it is possible to combine frameworks within a single project to meet your project goals.

 

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