Javascript

How to Discover JavaScript Libraries in React, Angular, and Vue

Published Aug 30, 2022

Updated Feb 16, 2023

5 min read

This article was written over 18 months ago and may contain information that is out of date. Some content may be relevant but please refer to the relevant official documentation or available resources for the latest information.

Navigating the JavaScript ecosystem to find tools and resources is often an overwhelming and consuming task for many developers. But that makes sense, because it’s already so vast, and changes by the day!

Most libraries and frameworks have packages that help integrate with other development workflows like build tools, state management, styling, data-fetching, and form building.

This both makes it even more challenging to understand the ecosystem, and demands that developers continually learn with help from quality resources.

There are a few criteria to look out for when choosing tools and resources, including:

__Community adoption

Confirming the community’s adoption of the project is also important since it helps validate that others have tried a particular technology and have vetted it. You can infer the degree of adoption by checking out the number of downloads as identified by NPM.

__Community support

GitHub has a feature that allows the community to “star” or sponsor a repository. This helps the community support and promote the project, and generally means that the community is using the project and providing feedback for improvements.

__The Project maintainer

This is important because knowing the person, company, or community behind a project gives you an idea of the investment and commitment backing a project. You wouldn’t want to use a project that may be swiftly abandoned. The maintainer of a project is typically the host of the project repository on GitHub.

__Other criteria

The number of pull requests and open issues. Take note of not only the quantity of pull requests and issues, but when the most recent pull request merged. This helps identify the health of the project and if it is still actively maintained.

Finding relevant technologies doesn’t need to be this hard, which is why [framework.dev]((https://www.framework.dev/) is such a great open source tool for discovering tools, technologies, and learning resources!

Framework.dev

Framework.dev helps developers choose the appropriate tools for their projects by comparing libraries, frameworks, and tools with individual platforms for React, Angular, and Vue.

The platform considers all the criterias identified above such as open source community support, maintainers, and adoption, and compares them to help developers make important decisions for your project.

Since it is an open source project, you can add, edit, or suggest any project you feel should be added by submitting a PR.

Using Framework.dev

Let me walk you through how to use Framework.dev!

Visit https://www.framework.dev/ and click on one of the available technologies. For this example, I will select Angular.

Here, you can search and compare tools, libraries, blogs, courses, and more for the Angular framework or simply browse through the collection by clicking on the categories from the sidebar.

Click on the Library dropdown from the sidebar and select State Management.

This will curate a list of every resource in the collection that has “state management” in its name, description, or tag.

To filter the list with advanced options, click on the Advanced button and type filter criteria you want to apply to the list.

In the list, you will notice each item displays a description including the number of stars, downloads, and size of the project. In the top right corner of each item, there is a plus icon. Click on the plus icon of 2 random items to compare.

You can see that two selected items are highlighted. For this article, I selected Akita and NgRx Store. Go to the footer of the page and click “Compare”.

Here, you will be able to see side by side to Compare the library with details of Authors, Weekly Downloads, Overall Health and Stars to help in making decisions for your project.

You can also search for a library or tool if it is not listed on the menu. Here, I searched for “State Management”, which curated a result with every resource in the collection that has “state management” in its name, description, or tag.

You can navigate to other categories of blogs, books, courses, communities and podcasts to browse and compare these resources.

Conclusion

What will you use Framework.dev for next? Let us know how it has helped you!

Framework.dev is committed to helping developers navigate the often confusing landscape of JavaScript technologies and educational resources.

One of the best parts of this project is that it welcomes contributions from the greater web development community. If there is any content you want to see added to the platform, you can Submit a PR!

This Dot is a consultancy dedicated to guiding companies through their modernization and digital transformation journeys. Specializing in replatforming, modernizing, and launching new initiatives, we stand out by taking true ownership of your engineering projects.

We love helping teams with projects that have missed their deadlines or helping keep your strategic digital initiatives on course. Check out our case studies and our clients that trust us with their engineering.

About the author(s)

Hassan Sani
@inidaname @inidaname

The HTML Dialog Element: Enhancing Accessibility and Ease of Use

The HTML Dialog Element: Enhancing Accessibility and Ease of Use Dialogs are a common component added to applications, whether on the web or in native applications. Traditionally there has not been a standard way of implementing these on the web, resulting in many ad-hoc implementations that don’t act consistently across different web applications. Often, commonly expected features are missing from dialogs due to the complexity of implementing them. However, web browsers now offer a standard dialog element. Why use the dialog element? The native dialog element streamlines the implementation of dialogs, modals, and other kinds of non-modal dialogs. It does this by implementing many of the features needed by dialogs for you that are already baked into the browser. This is helpful as it reduces the burden on the developer when making their applications accessible by ensuring that user expectations concerning interaction are met, and it can also potentially simplify the implementation of dialogs in general. Basic usage Adding a dialog using the new tag can be achieved with just a few lines of code. ` However, adding the dialog alone won’t do anything to the page. It will show up only once you call the .showModal() method against it. ` Then if you want to close it you can call the .close() method on the dialog, or press the escape key to close it, just like most other modals work. Also, note how a backdrop appears that darkens the rest of the page and prevents you from interacting with it. Neat! Accessibility and focus management Correctly handling focus is important when making your web applications accessible to all users. Typically you have to move the current focus to the active dialog when showing them, but with the dialog element that’s done for you. By default, the focus will be set on the first focusable element in the dialog. You can optionally change which element receives focus first by setting the autofocus attribute on the element you want the focus to start on, as seen in the previous example where that attribute was added to the close element. Using the .showModal() method to open the dialog also implicitly adds the dialog ARIA role to the dialog element. This helps screen readers understand that a modal has appeared and the screen so it can act accordingly. Adding forms to dialogs Forms can also be added to dialogs, and there’s even a special method value for them. If you add a element with the method set to dialog then the form will have some different behaviors that differ from the standard get and post form methods. First off, no external HTTP request will be made with this new method. What will happen instead is that when the form gets submitted, the returnValue property on the form element will be set to the value of the submit button in the form. So given this example form: ` The form element with the example-form id will have its returnValue set to Submit. In addition to that, the dialog will close immediately after the submit event is done being handled, though not before automatic form validation is done. If this fails then the invalid event will be emitted. You may have already noticed one caveat to all of this. You might not want the form to close automatically when the submit handler is done running. If you perform an asynchronous request with an API or server you may want to wait for a response and show any errors that occur before dismissing the dialog. In this case, you can call event.preventDefault() in the submit event listener like so: ` Once your desired response comes back from the server, you can close it manually by using the .close() method on the dialog. Enhancing the backdrop The backdrop behind the dialog is a mostly translucent gray background by default. However, that backdrop is fully customizable using the ::backdrop pseudo-element. With it, you can set a background-color to any value you want, including gradients, images, etc. You may also want to make clicking the backdrop dismiss the modal, as this is a commonly implemented feature of them. By default, the <dialog> element doesn’t do this for us. There are a couple of changes that we can make to the dialog to get this working. First, an event listener is needed so that we know when the user clicks away from the dialog. ` Alone this event listener looks strange. It appears to dismiss the dialog whenever the dialog is clicked, not the backdrop. That’s the opposite of what we want to do. Unfortunately, you cannot listen for a click event on the backdrop as it is considered to be part of the dialog itself. Adding this event listener by itself will effectively make clicking anywhere on the page dismiss the dialog. To correct for this we need to wrap the contents of the dialog content with another element that will effectively mask the dialog and receive the click instead. A simple element can do! ` Even this isn’t perfect though as the contents of the div may have elements with margins in them that will push the div down, resulting in clicks close to the edges of the dialog to dismiss it. This can be resolved by adding a couple of styles the the wrapping div that will make the margin stay contained within the wrapper element. The dialog element itself also has some default padding that will exacerbate this issue. ` The wrapping div can be made into an inline-block element to contain the margin, and by moving the padding from the parent dialog to the wrapper, clicks made in the padded portions of the dialog will now interact with the wrapper element instead ensuring it won’t be dismissed. Conclusion Using the dialog element offers significant advantages for creating dialogs and modals by simplifying implementation with reasonable default behavior, enhancing accessibility for users that need assistive technologies such as screen readers by using automatic ARIA role assignment, tailored support for form elements, and flexible styling options....

Oct 25, 2024

4 mins

HTMLJavaScript

Learning Paths for Next.JS Developers with Ankita Kulkarni

In this video, Rob Ocel and co-hosts Tracy Lee, Adam Rackis, and Danny Thompson talk with tech educator Ankita Kulkarni about her journey from engineering leader to full-time educator. Ankita shares insights on teaching Next.js, bridging practical knowledge gaps, and helping developers tackle real-world challenges. They discuss Next.js as a React-based framework, its benefits, and the challenges it presents for beginners. Chapters - Introduction to the Podcast and Guests 00:01 - Meet Ankita Kulkarni, Tech Educator 00:26 - Ankita's Transition to Full-Time Education 01:41 - Teaching Practical Knowledge in Next.js 03:19 - Effective Methods for Teaching Next.js 05:27 - Challenges of Being a Full-Time Educator 07:48 - Balancing Broad and Specific Examples 09:54 - Embracing Mistakes as a Teaching Tool 12:13 - Pair Programming and Mentorship 14:00 - Discussion on Next.js and Framework Adoption 16:48 - Advantages and Challenges of Next.js 18:12 - Choosing the Right Framework for Your Needs 20:35 - Impact of Next.js in React Documentation 22:26 - Learning Paths for New Developers 23:24 - The Rise of Full-Stack Web Development 25:09 - Benefits of Frameworks Abstracting Complexity 26:27 - OpenNext and Deployment Flexibility 28:06 - Ankita's Excitement for New Next.js Features 30:35 - The Future of Next.js Without Vercel 32:16 - Final Thoughts and Where to Find Everyone Online 34:21 Follow Ankita Kulkarni on Social Media Twitter: https://x.com/kulkarniankita9 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@kulkarniankita Sponsored by This Dot: thisdot.co...

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2 mins

NextJSJavaScript

Using a Starter Kit on Starter.dev to Kickstart Your React and Angular Projects

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AngularReact

Build Facial Recognition and Chatbot AIs using TypeScript with Jack Herrington

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2 mins

AIArtificial Intelligence

Let's innovate together!

We're ready to be your trusted technical partners in your digital innovation journey.

Whether it's modernization or custom software solutions, our team of experts can guide you through best practices and how to build scalable, performant software that lasts.

How to Discover JavaScript Libraries in React, Angular, and Vue

Framework.dev

Using Framework.dev

Conclusion

Hassan Sani

You might also like

The HTML Dialog Element: Enhancing Accessibility and Ease of Use

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Build Facial Recognition and Chatbot AIs using TypeScript with Jack Herrington

Let's innovate together!

You might also like

The HTML Dialog Element: Enhancing Accessibility and Ease of Use

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Using a Starter Kit on Starter.dev to Kickstart Your React and Angular Projects

Build Facial Recognition and Chatbot AIs using TypeScript with Jack Herrington