Top JavaScript Libraries You Should Know About
Cleave, Voca, Slick, Tensorflow, and more
Cover Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash
JavaScript has evolved since its beginnings. There’s no doubt that JS is one of the most popular languages, and it will probably stay that way. Popular libraries are incredibly useful for front-end developers — they allow your applications to have powerful functionalities right out of the box. Here are my top personal picks
Algolia Places
Algolia Places is a JavaScript location library that helps you with form autocompletes. I used it for one of my projects recently and was surprised by its performance. You can use the API as an alternative to Google Places API. Algolia Places provides you with a free plan to help you get started.
TensorFlow.js
TensorFlow is a popular platform for machine learning. They recently introduced a JavaScript library for training and deploying ML models in the browser and on Node.js. You can:
run existing models.
retrain existing models.
create models from scratch in your browser.
Animate CSS
Animate CSS is one of the easiest text animation libraries currently available for JavaScript. Using it is as simple as importing the library and adding the CSS class to your text. You can install the package with npm, yarn, or directly use a CDN. It is quite popular, with 66.5k stars on GitHub.
Chart.js
Chart.js is an open-source data visualization library that comes with stunning animations out of the box. It’s also responsive, redrawing charts when the user resizes the window. It offers lots of different types of charts, plus the ability to mix them in a single space to provide a really interesting data set.
Cleave.js
Want to format your input field as you type? This is the library for you. This simple library allows you to format your <input/> content when you are typing. It includes credit card number formatting, phone number formatting, numeral formatting, and more.
Check out their website.
Voca
Voca is a JavaScript library for manipulating strings. The Voca library offers helpful functions to make string manipulations comfortable: change case, trim, pad, slugify, latinise, sprintfy, truncate, escape, and much more. The modular design allows us to load the entire library or just individual functions to minimize the application builds. The library is fully tested, well documented, and long-term supported.
Slick
Slick is an all-in-one, responsive carousel. It has lots of options, lazy loading, swipe gestures, and more. Check them out here.
Socket.IO
Socket.IO enables real-time, bidirectional, and event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser, or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed. It can detect disconnections and provides auto-connection support, along with other significant features like binary support, channel support, and multiplexing support.
MathJAX
MathJAX is a JavaScript display engine for mathematics that works in all browsers. It uses CSS with web fonts or SVG, so equations scale at all zoom levels with no issues.
That’s it for this article. If you think any other library deserves a spot on this list, leave a comment below.