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Ask HN: What is the coolest JS library out there?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the coolest JS library out there?

#41

Post by chjj »

This is going to be the most shameless plug I've ever done in my life, but I actually believe my css selector engine ( https://github.com/chjj/zest ) beats every other one into the ground in terms of speed, features, and extensibility. I've probably just been waiting for an opportunity to shout it from the rooftops. Unfortunately, it's kind of hard for a selector engine to gain momentum since people don't really use them standalone unless they're writing a dom library.

It's not the coolest, but I think it's the coolest selector engine. I'm also totally biased.

Re: Ask HN: What is the coolest JS library out there?

#42

Post by simonsarris »

(disclosure: shameless plug)

I make GoJS, a HTML canvas-based diagramming library with all sorts of useful features. Node and link concepts (with data binding, templating), layouts, an undo manager, lots of customizable tools, drag and drop/cut and paste.

In other words, a very rich set of diagramming features atop HTML5 canvas.

I think its cool, because it took two years of canvas tomfoolery to get working well, and I think its much faster than similar diagramming libraries for canvas out right now. A lot of technically interesting stuff was encountered while making it, but I haven't had the time to write about my collected intricacies yet.

http://gojs.net/beta/

Or straight to samples:

http://gojs.net/beta/samples/flowchart.html

Firefox warning[1] for that specific sample though. I need to change the default sample this week.

[1] Super frustrating! The new IonMonkey JavaScript engine crashes under very certain conditions that are met during my link avoidsNodes algorithm. This means that Firefox 18 and 19 (but not 17 and 20) will crash on the Flowchart sample, because the link routing is set to use avoidsNodes. It's unfortunate but even though they're aware of the bug they aren't going to bother fixing it for FF19.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=830063

~~~

By the way, if there are other canvas library authors out there who have had interesting (or downright weird) issues with various canvas implementations, I'd love to hear from you!

Re: Ask HN: What is the coolest JS library out there?

#43

Post by benmanns »

I've been having a lot of fun with https://github.com/harthur/brain (neural network implementation in JavaScript) lately. Perhaps it's not something you would use on a real, live site, but it is fun to prototype neural network stuff in the browser with easy access to the DOM, canvas, and WebGL.

Re: Ask HN: What is the coolest JS library out there?

#45

Post by krapp »

tjmarshall wrote: post #44

PotatoSalad.js is the best. I bet a bunch of you actually searched for that on google. What's sad is that is probably the name of some obscure testing library. What have we come to...?

I made a broccoli.js once when I thought I needed a rudimentary canvas image editor, it never really went anywhere but over my head:

https://github.com/kennethrapp/broccoli-js

but it's honestly terrible and even mentioning it in this thread is a terrible thing to do. I'm going to go think about what i've done now, over in the corner, there.

Re: Ask HN: What is the coolest JS library out there?

#47

Post by atirip »

chjj wrote: post #41

This is going to be the most shameless plug I've ever done in my life, but I actually believe my css selector engine ( https://github.com/chjj/zest ) beats every other one into the ground in terms of speed, features, and extensibility. I've probably just been waiting for an opportunity to shout it from the rooftops. Unfortunately, it's kind of hard for a selector engine to gain momentum since people don't really use…

I'm not biased. +1

Re: Ask HN: What is the coolest JS library out there?

#49

Post by jedahan »

daleharvey wrote: post #7

Seems like a reasonable time to self promote http://pouchdb.com/ PouchDB is a full reimplementation of CouchDB inside the browser (using browser storage), you can build applications that work offline then sync your data with 'the cloud'

Amazing, glad you plugged it here. Gonna test it for a project in the galleries here at the Met Museum, as our wifi is a bit flaky at times :)
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