I was just reviewing an accessibility presentation where the author had an interesting slide on the top 15 UI libraries on GitHub with 1500+ watchers. Here they are with links and descriptions (my own comments in italics):
- Bootstrap, from Twitter -Â Simple and flexible HTML, CSS, and Javascript for popular user interface components and interactions. A favourite of mine and I’ve used it on Open Solutions, ViMbAdmin, TallyStick, ePayroll and more.
- impress.js – It’s a presentation framework based on the power of CSS3 transforms and transitions in modern browsers and inspired by the idea behind prezi.com. (GitHub page).
- chosen -Â Chosen is a library for making long, unwieldy select boxes more friendly. Another plugin we love and use in a number of projects.
- jQuery-File-Upload -Â File Upload widget with multiple file selection, drag&drop support, progress bars and preview images for jQuery.
- jquery-ui – jQuery UI provides abstractions for low-level interaction and animation, advanced effects and high-level, themeable widgets, built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library, that you can use to build highly interactive web applications. (GitHub page). Another favourite of ours and we use it along side Bootstrap with the jquery-ui Bootstrap theme.
- spin.js -Â An animated CSS3 loading spinner with VML fallback for IE.
- deck.js – Modern HTML presentations (GitHub page).
- Skeleton -Â A Beautiful Boilerplate for Responsive, Mobile-Friendly Development.
- Foundation -Â An easy to use, powerful, and flexible framework for building prototypes and production code on any kind of device.
- showoff -Â the best damn presentation software a developer could ever love (example).
- ajax-upload -Â A file upload script with progress-bar, drag-and-drop (GitHub page).
- isotope -Â An exquisite jQuery plugin for magical layouts.
- Timeline JS -Â Beautifully crafted timelines that are easy, and intuitive to use. This actually looks really cool and very pretty.
- etherpad-lite -Â An Etherpad based on node.js – Our goal is to make collaborative editing the standard on the web.
- ColorBox -Â A lightweight customizable lightbox plugin for jQuery.
As an honourable mention, if you use Bootstrap and it’s modal dialog, take a look at Bootbox which provides wrappers for JavaScript alert(), confirm() and other flexible dialogs.
Some thinks that jump out at me from the above is that frameworks are very popular and, similarly, prestation frameworks are also very popular. There must be a deep hatred of PowerPoint and Keynote among web developers! The other take away for me is how a very small project – such as chosen – can become hugely hugely popular.