Are you a vanilla JavaScript developer or a JavaScript library lover? If you are a vanilla JavaScript developer, please feel free to step away silently because you may not get what you want, but if you are a library or framework lover, please bookmark this page as what we list below are what you may use in the future.
There are tons of JavaScript libraries created to ease the headache of developers who have to deal with different browsers on different devices. You may use some of them before such as jQuery.js, Twitter Bootstrap etc. But I bet you have missed some of them. Let's take a look about list of libraries.
jQuery
The first and most popular library to solve the browser compatibility issue introduced in JavaScript. It enables the developers focus on design and business logic instead of dealing with different tricky problems.It is mainly used for managing DOM. There ae many different plugins for jQuery available now such as jQuery UI.
Require.js
AMD module loader which lets you have a very modular code base (which is great for development) and it also provides a build tool so you can concatenate and minify your separate modules into a single file for production.
Prototype.js
Prototype takes the complexity out of client-side web programming. Built to solve real-world problems, it adds useful extensions to the browser scripting environment and provides elegant APIs around the clumsy interfaces of Ajax and the Document Object Model.
Processing.js
With the introduction of HTML5 , there is a new HTML element added into the HTML family--Canvas, canvas is very useful as it allows the user to operate as a painting element and enables you to control what you can draw. Processing.js is designed for manipulating canvas elements.
Processing.js makes your data visualizations, digital art, interactive animations, educational graphs, video games, etc. work using web standards and without any plug-ins. You write code using the Processing language, include it in your web page, and Processing.js does the rest. It's not magic, but almost.
Backbone.js
Backbone is a framework for managing client side data structure.Based on the classical MVC model Backbone.js gives structure to web applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing API over a RESTful JSON interface.
AngularJS
AngualrJS is another MVC framwework powered by Google. It enables the web apps which have many data driven components to be developed quickly.
D3.js
D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. D3 helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG and CSS. D3’s emphasis on web standards gives you the full capabilities of modern browsers without tying yourself to a proprietary framework, combining powerful visualization components and a data-driven approach to DOM manipulation.
Underscore.js
If you are funtional programming language lover, you may find that you can be more efficient if you use a functional programming like library, underscore.js gives you the option. Underscore provides over 100 functions that support both your favorite workaday functional helpers: map, filter, invoke — as well as more specialized goodies: function binding, javascript templating, creating quick indexes, deep equality testing, and so on.
Twitter Bootstrap
If you are a developer who lacks of sense of art and want to make you web app online as soon as possible without much intervention in the UI design, you can give a try of Twitter Bootstrap. This framework provides a standard template for creating attractive UIs, you just need to put the necessary classes and tags created by Bootstrap, then you can get waht you want.
Modernizr
It is a JavaScript library that detects HTML5 and CSS3 features in the user’s browser. Due to browser incompatibility, we often need to check whether a feature is supported by one browser, if we have a common library which can help us do the detection, we can save much time. This is also why we have Modernizr.
Browserify
It enables browser-side require() the node.js way.
MathJax
It's an open source JavaScript display engine for mathematics in all browsers. It provides LaTex math formulas in the browser. For those who create education apps, you may love it.
Handlebars.js
Handlebars provides the power necessary to let you build semantic templates effectively with no frustration.
three.js
Three.js is a library that makes WebGL - 3D in the browser - very easy. While a simple cube in raw WebGL would turn out hundreds of lines of Javascript and shader code, a Three.js equivalent is only a fraction of that.
