JSDB.io - A Database of JavaScript Libraries | Hacker News Reader

JSDB.io - A Database of JavaScript Libraries

jsdb.io

123 pointsksokhan60 comments

JSDB is the name of a javascript cross-platform environment based on SpiderMonkey, that exists since 2005 and is still active.

http://jsdb.org/

That doesn't seem like a very good name. Why "DB"?

From the front page: "JSDB is JavaScript for databases, a scripting language for data-driven, network-centric programming on Windows, Mac, Linux, and SunOS. JSDB works with databases, XML, the web, and email. It is free and open-source. Use it as a JavaScript shell, to run CGI programs, or as a web server."

But, that's kind of a silly reason right? It's obviously a general purpose server platform. Nobody would say "NodeJS/perl/ruby/python/PHP/C++/Go/Java is for databases".

Actually, it was originally designed to allow quick access to databases, but grew very quickly. So, no, not a silly reason at all.

It doesn't sound like it has much to do with databases anymore, so the name really doesn't seem to fit.

Hacker news doesn't have that much to do with hacking these days either, do you think it should change?

I believe hacker news is very much so relevant to hackers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)

I believe that jsdb.io is also a fine name for a database of js libraries. I find it easy to remember. While looking at the url might be misleading before you've visited, once you've seen the site it'll be clear.

That was tongue-in-cheek, see the parent comment.

BTW, I don't think jsdb is a bad name, but it's already taken.

With two unrelated projects I don't see a huge problem... People are not going to confuse the two, and I dont want to go into which is "more appropriate". Both jsdb.org and jsdb.io are completely free to name themselves as they want. No trademarks, no infringements. It was honestly a really nicely appropriate and memorable name for the service.

It was also a steal for a four letter domain name :)

In Google Sets[0] I entered CPAN, CTAN, CRAN, CJAN, names of archive repositories for other languages.

It added JSAN.

[0] http://googlesystem.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/google-sets-still...

The library is called jQuery, not Jquery - same with jQuery UI, DOM is an abbreviation.

It looks like you've crudely turned things which aren't words which start with an uppercase letter into ones which do, for no reason.

Thanks for the tip. Fixed. Stared at it for so long during development that I didn't even notice!

Would be great to have something like this also serve up the JS files via a CDN, and provide a JS-based loader (like require.js for remote scripts). Plus maybe dependency management?

That's http://cdnjs.com/

Ooh, nice; I've seen this before too but forgot all about it. @ksokhan, maybe think of linking up the CDN URL's from cdnjs.com to your site? Your site definitely offers more as far as discoverability.

While you're at it, link to http://npmjs.org/

e.g., http://www.jsdb.io/view/socket-io -> https://npmjs.org/package/socket.io

Yea, had a few people mention this... definitely my next addition! stay tuned :)

Looks useful. Some comments

- I wish there were a way to sort by name

- How are the ratings calculated? (Just realized that if you hover on a library's rating it tells you the rating is "derrived (sic) from combination of the other metrics": would be good to know how exactly + "derived" is misspelled.)

Ah good point on the first, and working on the second! want to be a bit more transparent, but basically, its simply a combination of the other factors listed with some logical balancing through multipliers. (ie. stars is weighted more than contributor count)

I expected the "sort by" thingy to be at the top-right of the list of things I was viewing.

Despite that minor gripe, please accept my compliments. I'd love to see a site that can point me at all the newest and most popular JS tools and maybe this can be it.

Thanks for the kind words. The sort by should only list the current page/category. You might be confused because "sort by" ignores pagination and rearranges all of the libraries in that category, and only then re-paginates it... Or am I misunderstanding your comment?

Thanks for coming back to me. Let me clarify what I mean.

When I'm on the front page or, especially, once I have selected a category, I want to be able to sort that list by newest/top-rated/last-updated/etc.

I'm used to seeing the option to do that sorting (or filtering, if you ever do that) up at the top of the things I am looking at, rather than by the list of categories.

So, the recommendation I am making is to show any sorting/filtering controls at the top of the list instead of on the left hand side of the page.

Aah, yes! That makes sense. Ill take a look at modifying the design to do that, its probably a better UI paradigm.

I think a tag system instead of a directory system may be better for categorizing libraries. For example, is D3 is "data / undefined". Arguably it could exist in multiple categories.

This is probably the hardest problem to solve in building a tool like this. Ive thought a lot about this, and here is my thinking:

Its not an either-or scenario. Tags are great at grouping similar libraries together, but it doesn't work very well when you look at all the tags together, since there is no clear hierarchy.

Categories are good, on the other hand, for creating a clear structure for looking for libraries. If a user is confused about where to find something specific, they can just search it.

My plan is to combine the two approaches in jsdb: have a clear and very general category system, and a tag system for finding inter-related js libraries.

What? Why have two systems?

Just make the categories be system-defined tags. Display your navigation with only them. Let users add new tags but don't display them in the nav.

Why require a Github URL? I should be able to give you any number of URLs to any sites for each lib. This would be much more useful!

There's also MicroJS:

http://microjs.com/

Whoa, sweet find! Slightly differently positioned though I think...

Looking like a great resource, nice work. +1 on the suggestions to link to npm and cdnsjs.

I did spot that searching for 'require' did not find 'requirejs' (searching 'requirejs' finds it).

Yea, good point. The search system leaves a bit to be desired, but I'm working on it!

Maybe add Typehead for search form http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/javascript.html#typeahea...

Yea, the search system right now is a very basic iteration (I really just wanted to get this launched) but I definitely have plans for making it better. Typeahead is definitely one of the first things I'm going to add.

That is pretty cool. I added my game development library/framework as "2D Images", but maybe "Game Development" could be a separate category?

Yea, I was thinking of actually adding that, as well as a few other categories. Thanks for the submission!

Oddly, you've been working on something very similar to a small project of my own. www.javascriptoo.com. Great work.

http://www.jsdb.io/search?q=closure

Thanks for the tip. I'll make sure to add some more :)

http://www.jsdb.io/submit

The beauty of a collaborative system!

D'oh!

Great work. Cheers from the http://jster.net folks. :)

Looks more mature than JSDB.io - particularly with the larger collection of libraries and tagging system etc. But honestly your site is cluttered and ugly, JSDB is winning there. A twitter feed, really? I think your site needs some clear direction. Just saying.

Good points. Any specific ideas? The Twitter feed could go, that's definitely true.

Ok, I'll give some suggestions, I'll be blunt. But first you should know that I'm not a web designer - so take them with salt. It might also be worth asking for suggestions as a Hacker News thread? Or perhaps a web-design specific forum. I'm taking an interest because I think the web development world really needs a good site to serve as a list/index/catalog of open-source javascript (and css) libraries, with user ratings and comments etc.

Fundamentally, I think the intent of your design is wrong. Its cluttered and all about the bells and whistles rather than focusing on use-cases and the problems your site should be trying to solve.

(1) Home page Editor's Choice Part Get rid of this, I don't think users care about your editors picks. User's care more what the user base / crowd thinks. So you could perhaps put trending libraries (those receiving a lot of up-votes recently) here instead. Or otherwise just remove it all-together.

Blog Part Also get rid of this. The foremost parts of your homepage should be the Category list and a search box. Also get rid of the tag cloud - doesn't add anything IMO.

Layout and Color Scheme All wrong, too many different colors and shades, jagged lines and shadows everywhere. Less is more here I think.

(2) Category Page Layout Change to a list-view instead of a grid-view. The grid looks too squashed, and users don't mind scrolling - list view is better for responsive design / mobile devices. Also sort the list by rating.

Each Library Increase the font size of the description <- will work better when you change to a list view instead of a grid. Show the rating larger as well, and then to a lesser extent the GitHub stars etc. Take some design pointers from the StackOverflow question list (http://stackoverflow.com/unanswered).

(3) Library Page Comments Shift the DISQUS comments above the 'ALSO ON JSTER' part, put that stuff at the bottom, users care more about comments. Remove the 'RECOMMENDED CONTENT' - its irrelevant and your site is too immature for advertising yet.

Rating System Light bulbs? I honestly think you would be better off with an up/down vote rating system like StackOverflow. A library having a 5/5 rating doesn't mean anything when there is only one vote (probably from the developer who wrote it and submitted the library). If you wanted to make it really smart, you could allow users to up/down vote a library for specific category. For example, users could up-vote the D3.js library within the 'Charting' tag/category only if they wish to - which means the user thinks D3.js is good for charts.

That's all for now - have run out of time.

I wish there's a way to sort by the size of the library.

or the best among all: Vanilla Js http://vanilla-js.com/

Thats funny :) took me a bit to figure out the joke

very useful link, you should work on interface though..very hard to filter the lib i want...

http://microjs.com/ much easier to browse

Can you qualify that? Would love to get help/suggestions on making navigation better...

What i meant was, everything on a single page and i could just ctrl-F search the list. JSDB.io is neat too for a larger growing list of JS.

...Its just a list of JS projects -- Its much harder to browse IMO.

maybe needs some more categories. where to put markdown libs?

definitely. Working on it! If you are in doubt though, just put in in Miscellaneous and I'll clean it up later :)

Nice that you're tweaking things. You may want to move Underscore from "helpers/object-extends" to "application-tools/utilities".

Yea, that makes sense. Moved. (I'm a bit doubtful about that helpers category in general, probably going to change it)

i like it, hope to see more

thank you for making this

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