When I started frontend development, I had challenges building some beautiful components I have always seen on other platforms and the thought of how to build such components for the first time will eat up time and clients always have unrealistic deadlines. So, I stumbled on a few libraries and went in search of others.
In no particular order let’s dive right in!
1. Drop zone
Drop zone is a library I’ve used on a couple of projects, which I’ve fully familiarised myself with. Its pros are; it’s not dependent on any libraries and it’s lightweight. It is an open-source library that provides drag’n’drop file uploads with image previews and it’s very easy to customize to your project theme.
2. Chartjs
Do you want to build a dashboard with complex charts or statistical web-based applications? Chartjs library saves you the stress of writing complex libraries. It comes with pie chart, bar chart, line, area etc. It’s a very comprehensive library, easy to use and customize, with responsive and dope animations. This library got me looking like a star on a recent project.
3. Star-rating-svg
This’s a jQuery based library for star ratings. Looking to build an e-commerce platform that requires buyers rating sellers? Here is a library that comes in handy with no external icons/images needed. It can have half-star ratings and it’s highly customizable with the execution of callback after rating.
4. Slick Carousel
This’s another library I’ve used over again in different projects for image sliders or product sliders. It’s also a jQuery based library just like star-rating-svg. It’s fully responsive with autoplay, dots, arrows and callbacks etc. It’s such an easy library to get started with.
5. Selectric
If you want to customize HTML select, then look no further with this bad boy. It can easily give the regular select a new look, this is another lightweight jQuery-based library. It’s easily customizable, with very detailed documentation. A newbie can easily create unique designs for select from a UI designer.
6. SimpleLightbox
I researched on a couple of image lightbox libraries and this seems to be my favourite as it’s easy to customize with beautifully well-curated documentation, responsiveness, touch-friendly, swipe gestures for next/previous image, minimalistic, easy to install and use etc.
Conclusion
There are loads of other libraries out there that could probably do better jobs than the ones I have listed and vice-versa. However, these listed libraries are the ones I’m familiar with and I would recommend them to someone just starting.