Unheap - A tidy repository of jQuery plugins | Hacker News Reader

Unheap - A tidy repository of jQuery plugins

unheap.com

262 pointsshawndumas51 comments

Apparently one of the projects listed, Packery, is licensed under the MIT license for open source projects, and under an expensive commercial license for commercial projects. This makes my brain hurt. Isn't the whole point of the MIT license that it can be sublicensed without restriction? Then what's to stop someone from sublicensing the free version to themselves for commercial use?

http://packery.metafizzy.co/license.html

I'll admit the license issue is weird, but really–since when is $25 or $90 expensive?

I purchased the Isotope commercial license a few months back and I actually bought the Packery one today. I'm not really concerned with the nuances or semantics of the licensing.

I'm not sure about the MIT, but I believe nothing stops them from doing that. It's like WordPress themes or plugins licensed under the GPL. Most of the time, you pay for support and additional features.

If you license under MIT but restrict who can use the software, it's not really MIT. MIT explicitly states that you may use the software "without restriction".

The GPL is even more stringent in that it doesn't allow you to further restrict the usage of others.

It's less about the cost and more about the fact that they don't understand open source licensing.

If you're using that lib for commercial purposes and you can't afford the $25/90 then you're Doing It Wrong™

I love this resource, but my only problem is that some of the [beautiful] thumbnails portray the plugin better than the actually are. I'm not complaining about that, but the timeline one in particular was super janky in production but looked lovely in the image.

Not sure how feasible this would be, but what I'd be overjoyed to see is a way to push the resource over to something like Codepen.io (or something on Unheap's end) so you could tinker with it and have all of these spin-offs of people actually customizing the resource that Unheap could also link to. It'd act as additional inspiration, give people more of a reason to use the site, get more designers into code without the setup hassle, and help the plugin author better sell his/her skills as a developer vs. as a designer and likewise, better sell the designer as someone capable of working with code.

Then you might like http://jquer.in

I think you missed his point.

He is asking to see the live demo link to be running on codepen.io. So there is more collaboration via forks, hacks.

Think: There can be more possibilities of using the same plugin via contributions and forks.

This is absolutely incredible. Thanks for putting together such an amazing resource!

I was just thinking about this...

Suppose you're writing a web page with AngularJS.

Then you find out that you need a component that is very self-contained and of general use - let's say it is a WYSIWYG editor and let's pretend this thing doesn't exist yet (you will have to write it). Now the question:

Do you write it depending on AngularJS, or just JQuery?

According to the AngularJS Developer Guide [1]:

«Angular was built for the CRUD application in mind. (...) Games, and GUI editors are examples of very intensive and tricky DOM manipulation. These kinds of apps are different from CRUD apps, and as a result are not a good fit for Angular. In these cases using something closer to bare metal such as jQuery may be a better fit.»

[1] http://docs.angularjs.org/guide/overview#angularsweetspot

I'd think Backbone plus jQuery makes more sense if you need close to the metal interaction, but still need some level of structure.

What is "close to the metal interaction" when you're talking about set of frameworks that run in an embedded interpreter that runs in a browser that runs on a GUI that runs on an OS that runs on.. oh wait.

I think you're missing the point of the question.

I don't think so.

It seems to me that the main question was: if I am already using AngularJS to develop a web page/app, is it better to develop every needed self-contained component in AngularJS or can I mix JQuery-only components with AngularJS-based code?

So my answer, citing the official AngularJS documentation, was: no problem mixing AngularJS and JQuery, but some self-contained components ‒ such as a WYSIWYG editor ‒ maybe don't fit well with the AngularJS architecture.

If you think that I'm missing the point yet, would you mind to elaborate on that? Thanks.

Confirming that that is precisely my question.

Thank you Hugo for confirming it :)

I would prefer that a component depends only on jQuery but then provide an AngularJS directive to integrate that component into AngularJS.

So its more or less like C: everyone wants to program on higher level languages, but everyone prefers that the libraries are written in ANSI C, so that every language can use them :)

jQuery with an optional Angular directive in another git repo.

Thanks for listing me, guys! [0]. I bet I've gotten a ton of watchers from it.

[0]: http://www.unheap.com/?s=dynamo

It's really great that you draw a custom cover image for every single plugin.

Suggestion: make all navigation ajax-based and display the items right away (don't wait until all items are finished loading). This will make your site much-much more faster.

Here are even more. There are tons of hidden gems here that surprise me every day :)

http://pineapple.io/

This is awesome! Only thing that I would -love- to see on this page is a filter so you can select browsers. My company still requires IE6 +up ("just tell your boss to not supp... " Yea, I know, shut the fuck up) so it would be exceedingly useful to strip out everything that won't work in IE6.

Great work. You just made my life so much easier. I have always wondered about finding good jquery plugins and imagined if we could find a repo like this. Here it is!! Did I say awesome ?

If you add a donate button, I will happily donate :)

Bad ass! Did you do all the "thumbnails" yourself?

I'm curious about that too. They all have such a similar feel to them.

All thumbnails were designed/made by one person, yep.

If they do freelance work, do you mind sharing?

I must say, they do a great job at selecting plugins that goes into their repo.

I was chuffed that they considered my plugin good enough to add to their list (http://www.unheap.com/media/images/picstrips/). They add really nice illustrations for each plugin, the one for PicStrips is way better than anything on the actual Picstrips landing page! Don't know who does the illustrations but I would definitely consider hiring them in the future if they were available.

It's slightly weird having such a snappy menu and then when you click something having a second of blank white while it loads the page.

Very nicely done! Love the UI. Bookmarked it in hopes that it will help me find plugins for current projects.

another good one http://iwantaneff.in/repo/

Looks great! What's the sort order?

Also, when clicking the tabs on the left the sub menu slides out and the page reloads shortly after. Perhaps it should only reload when you click the "All x" submenu item?

Nice! Infinite scroll and sorting by github watchers would be useful too.

yep, plus one for infinite scroll, i don't know why people would implement pagination any longer.

also, the form field of the search bar looked confusing to me. I would make it a little less subtle to find it easier.

Very cool. One question... how do I actually get to the project page for each of these? I can't find any kind of link anywhere. (Am I just supposed to google the name?)

Hover the plugin and a "Launch" button shows up. Might not be compatible with touch devices.

Doesn't work on Chrome/Mac (does work on Firefox though). Might be because I have cookies disabled on Chrome... but why would a link require that cookies be enabled?

Works on Chrome/Mac for me. I don't have cookies disabled though. That does seem an odd thing to be the issue though.

The entire image should be clickable, not just the little button that shows up.

Great stuff, love the design and the icons.

I'd consider making all of the hover animations snappier (side menu, tooltips, etc). They look neat, but feel sluggish.

Another similar resource to unheap >> http://jquer.in

This is great stuff but does it really need to render well on mobile?

This is a great tool. +1

This is one of the most useful posts I've seen on HN. Thanks!

Very nice work. Whats your tech stack like?

why this is so awesome!??? tell me! I suddenly found so many cool plugins.

Gorgeous design!

Another good one, though it hasn't been updated as much lately: http://www.functionn.in/

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