Need JavaScript library suggestions!!

Aaron
Aaron Member, Administrator, Moderator, Employee Posts: 508 admin

Reaching out to the broader community on this one. NEED SOME INSPIRATION!

I've written a bunch of demos in JavaScript, using either the Solace JavaScript or the Eclipse Paho MQTT JavaScript libraries, coupled with various (usually) graphics or mapping libraries:

And have dabbled a bit with d3js as well, for building the Topic Hierarchy Browser:

ANYHOW! I'm hoping to source some other ideas for useful JavaScript libraries out there for building cool and engaging demos. Other mapping libraries? Other graphics packages? I remember @andrew_j_roberts mentioning some cool FSM library..?

Suggestions please! :-)

Comments

  • Tamimi
    Tamimi Member, Administrator, Employee Posts: 491 admin

    i know that @andrew_j_roberts is a big fan of X-state, a finite state machine library that makes handling state much simpler, tho its not necessary only for visualizations and front end development. It'll be interesting to check out alongside other viz libs. I'll keep an eye opened for some cool front end viz libs!

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0 ✭✭

    Hey Aaron, hey Tamimi,
    I started thinking about this and then forgot to reply.

    +1 to Tamimi's XState suggestion, there's going to be a major update (5.0) coming soon and a lot of people are excited about it. XState wouldn't really buy you any interactive elements, but it'd simplify the state management of any demos you end up building.

    You sort of rattled off most of the big ones — maps, charts, 3D graphics...

    Other than those you really end up working with lists and forms — so for a quick rec on that I've been using Svelte Virtual List for any app that needs to render a large number of items.

    If you're not dead set on using plain ole JavaScript, I highly recommend using Svelte. It's a framework that gives you a lot of tools for state management, animation, component scoped styling, etc — and is much closer to vanilla JavaScript than React/Vue/Angular.

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0 ✭✭

    I guess styling sort of rolls into interactivity, so also I want to plug TailwindCSS as a simple to understand, easy to pick up utility-first CSS framework that lets you quickly implement some basic styling for your demos.