The most popular JavaS­cript frame­works and libraries

JavaS­cript (or JS for short) is a scripting language used to make HTML content in­ter­act­ive in the web browser. This language can be used for both object-ori­ent­ated pro­gram­ming as well as pro­ced­ur­al and func­tion­al pro­gram­ming. JavaS­cript contains pre­defined objects (i.e. data elements with special prop­er­ties, methods, or functions) for accessing a web page, but they are sometimes cum­ber­some to use. To help users in writing JS, collected in­form­a­tion has been made public. These in­struc­tions and tools come in the form of various JavaS­cript libraries and frame­works, with the aim to make pro­gram­ming easier. We will go through the best and most well-known tools below.

It’s important to keep the two terms separate. Often 'library' and 'frame­work' are used as synonyms even though this is wrong, strictly speaking. Even though the trans­ition is seamless in many ways, there are basic dif­fer­ences between the two of them.

A JavaS­cript library is a library of pre-written JavaS­cript that enables an easier de­vel­op­ment of JavaS­cript-based ap­plic­a­tions. Libraries always ac­com­mod­ate sub­pro­grams which, along with support functions, help with the pro­gram­ming process. In contrast to a framework, a library is more developed to one par­tic­u­lar use, meaning it has functions that are co­ordin­ated to each other. For example, the JavaS­cript library D3.js is used for data visu­al­isa­tion – with this library you can implement small tables, diagrams, and stat­ist­ics, as well as more complex graphs (including an­im­a­tions and in­ter­ac­tions). Libraries are always in­teg­rated by a software program: the program accesses the cor­res­pond­ing functions of a program library when they need a specific function. As a result, libraries can only work within a program and can’t run in­de­pend­ently.

A framework is also not an autonom­ous program, but rather a special form of class library. A framework provides the software ar­chi­tec­ture (i.e. the basic structure) of an ap­plic­a­tion and es­sen­tially de­term­ines the de­vel­op­ment process. Frame­works have certain design patterns with different functions (often in the form of many libraries) and are used to develop new, in­de­pend­ent ap­plic­a­tions. An example is the Zend framework for PHP, which is used in Magento’s online shop software and web analytics tool Piwik.

Another dif­fer­ence between a framework and a library is how they are managed. With libraries, the code is accessed by pro­gram­mers through a software program’s pro­gram­ming interface. Frame­works, however, carry out an inversion of control: The code is embedded in fixed struc­tures and called up when needed. To summarise, you can say that libraries are called up by programs, whereas frame­works make spe­cific­a­tions to the program.

The core of JavaS­cript is a rather simple pro­gram­ming language that lends itself par­tic­u­larly well for use within a browser. Many pro­gram­mers face problems with their website interface, or DOM (Document Object Model). Here JavaS­cript frame­works and libraries come into play, making work a little bit easier for de­velopers, re­gard­less of their pro­gram­ming field. The JavaS­cript ex­ten­sions in­tro­duced in the next section can all be down­loaded for free.

JavaS­cript libraries are reusable codes through which certain features and functions for a website are assigned. jQuery is the most well-known JavaS­cript library and offers many useful features, although other libraries can be just as helpful.

jQuery

The very extensive jQuery library is the most-used JavaS­cript library. This is due to the fact that you can write simple cross-browser jQuery code, with lots of plugins available for use. jQuery’s open source library is part of many content man­age­ment systems like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla!. jQuery also functions as an interface for DOM, offering some of the following functions: CSS3 selectors make it easy to select and ma­nip­u­late website elements. jQuery is also par­tic­u­larly valued for its ability to integrate Ajax requests (HTTP requests without reloading the website).

jQuery UI

jQuery UI is a free extension for jQuery. Its purpose is to define and implement a user interface (UI) from sources like websites or web apps. The focus here is on simple design and in­ter­ac­tions. The functions jQuery has to offer include the pos­sib­il­ity to implement in­ter­act­ive elements (e.g. drag and drop, zooming in and out), an­im­a­tions, effects, and widgets (like auto­com­plete, sliders, date picker, etc.). The graphic editor, Them­eR­oller, can be used to create original themes, or existing themes can be used to adapt for your own purposes. True to its simple design con­fig­ur­a­tion, the modular structure of Them­eR­oller allows only the necessary com­pon­ents to be im­ple­men­ted.

Dojo Toolkit

The Dojo Toolkit is good for im­ple­ment­at­ing web ap­plic­a­tions and dynamic web content. As one of the oldest JavaS­cript libraries that is still relevant on the market, it offers a wide range of functions – the most important com­pon­ents of the toolkit are the main program (Dojo), and Dijit, a toolkit for graphical user in­ter­faces. In addition, you can use pre-defined widgets to integrate elements into the website you are creating. Dojo can also handle both DOM and Ajax.

There are con­sid­er­ably more JavaS­cript libraries than frame­works. The latter are es­pe­cially suitable for complex web ap­plic­a­tions. If de­velopers embrace the concepts and spe­cific­a­tions of re­spect­ive frame­works, they will be able to work very ef­fi­ciently with them.

AngularJS

This Google-main­tained framework has by far the largest community among the JavaS­cript frame­works. AngularJS is used (like its main com­pet­it­or: Facebook’s library, React) to create single page web ap­plic­a­tions (web apps, which consist only of HTML documents). Due to the MVVM concept (model-view-viewmodel) of this framework, web ap­plic­a­tions can be developed that are highly adaptable to user in­ter­ac­tion. (The man­u­fac­tur­ers of the JS framework, however, prefer to cat­egor­ise AngularJS as MVW: model-view-whatever). Here AngularJS renders the web ap­plic­a­tion on the client side. The framework is based on jQuery Lite – a slimmed-down version of the well-known JavaS­cript library, jQuery.

Ember.js

Ember.js is also a client-side framework that is used for im­ple­ment­ing single page web ap­plic­a­tions, with which you can also create desktop ap­plic­a­tions. A further dis­tin­guish­ing feature is that the creators of Ember.js in­tens­ively involve the community in the framework’s de­vel­op­ment process; for instance, dis­cuss­ing sig­ni­fic­ant framework changes with them before they are im­ple­men­ted. Ember.js is marketed as a framework for creating ambitious web ap­plic­a­tions – so it is primarily aimed at de­velopers who already have ex­per­i­ence with designing web ap­plic­a­tions.

Vue.js

Vue.js is also a JavaS­cript framework for de­vel­op­ing single-page web ap­plic­a­tions re­min­is­cent of Angular and React. The de­velopers of this re­l­at­ively young and ambitious project de­lib­er­ately designed Vue.js in such a way that beginners find it re­l­at­ively easy to get started. For example, it’s possible to integrate templates into HTML. In addition, Vue.js is also said to be much more flexible than many other frame­works, which usually strictly dictate the way the framework is handled.

Frame­works and libraries can con­sid­er­ably smooth the JavaS­cript pro­gram­ming process. Those mentioned above are only a small portion of the tools that are available. Ad­di­tion­al resources for JavaS­cript frame­works, libraries, and plugins include GitHub and Java­S­cript­ing. Here you can find suitable JavaS­cript ex­ten­sions for various purposes.