Top 10 Javascript Projects on GitHub by 2017

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The world wide web has developed over the years, with lots of improvements in the technology in the last decade. JavaScript was known only for developing the client side of web pages, and as new frameworks have been developed for server-side purposes, it is no surprise that JavaScript has become one of the most popular programming languages in the world today.

With the increase in the number of programmers learn to code in JavaScript, the development of great projects on an average has being on the rise as well.

An enormous amount of JavaScript projects is hosted on Github with some of them standing out. Last year I already made an observation of top 10 projects for the year 2016. Now, let’s see how we finished 2017.

1. React JS

88 356 ★

JavaScript is known mainly for client-side works and React JS is an example of a framework for developing great front end designs and interactions. Created by Facebook, React JS is a library that is used for creating powerful reusable UI components.

One of the positives of using React is that it hides away complexity by using a virtual DOM which helps improve application‘s performance. Features of the React JS include the JavaScript syntax extension, unidirectional data flow, components and much more.

Learning React is pretty easy if you have a good grasp of JavaScript. You can access the tutorial from the React JS website. Installation and setup of React is pretty easy.

npm install -gcreate-react-app

create-react-app my-app

cd my-app

npm start

2. Vue JS

83 742 ★

Just like React, Vue is another framework for building lovely user interfaces. This progressive framework is designed to be easily adaptable as time passes, this makes the library easy to integrate with other projects and use anytime.

Vue JS is known widely for its simplicity and asides that, it is lightweight, well documented and allows for flexibility during development. Vue encourages developers to write “simple JavaScript“, therefore is easy for beginners to pickup.

Looking for a guide? Here is one from the developers themselves. Vue is pretty easy to install and setup.

npm install -g vue-cli

vue init webpack my-app

cd my-app

npm install

npm run dev

3. Node JS

45 478 ★

Here is one of the best ever frameworks for server-side development, one of those that gave JavaScript its popularity with server-side scripting projects.

NodeJS has brought about the package management tool NPM which has helped made life easier for lots of developers. Developers also love as it provides a non-blocking I/O model, can be used to develop real-time web applications, is easy to learn, and has a large community.

The installation process for Node is different on Windows and Linux. For Windows, a simple download and install of the NodeJS executable application would suffice.

For Linux, the following Linux terminal command would get it installed:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nodejs

After installation, the following command should be run to confirm a successful installation.

node -v

4. Atom

43 368 ★

Here is one of the best text editors you would ever find. Competing with the likes of sublime text and visual studio as it is features-heavy and comes with a smart autocomplete, an integrated spell-check and is quite easy to use.

It is however pretty difficult to get started with using Atom, this is because of the time it takes to setup the plugins that help make for a great experience.

Installing Atom on Linux is not so difficult, running the command below would do the job.

curl -L https://packagecloud.io/AtomEditor/atom/gpgkey | sudo apt-key add -

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packagecloud.io/AtomEditor/atom/any/ any main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/atom.list'

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install atom

Installing on Windows is not difficult too, the executable file can be downloaded from the GitHub page.

5. HTML5 Boilerplate

39 744 ★

The development of web pages has become more complicated over time. With productivity at stake, reduction of routine tasks is of high importance.

With the HTML5 Boilerplate project, development becomes a more enjoyable process. This is the most popular frontend boilerplate framework you would find as it helps build fast, robust and adaptable web applications.

It includes the Normalize.css, jQuery, a custom build of the Modernizr face detection library and provides high performance to crown it all.

The HTML5 boilerplate framework can be downloaded from the website.

6. Three JS

39 297 ★

There are a few 3D computer graphics frameworks, and Three JS is one of them. Three JS is used to create beautiful 3D computer graphics in web browsers by utilizing the WebGL engine.

Three JS comes with a bunch of features. Features such as effects and scenes, camera, animations such as skinnedmesh and morphblendmesh, lights etc. have helped it gain popularity.

Its large community of developers and users is an immense positive, so you can expect stable improvements on this project.

Three JS is easy to install, can be downloaded from the GitHub page.

7. Meteor JS

39 213 ★

Talk about frameworks for building applications for all platforms, and Meteor JS is one of the best you would ever find.

Meteor JS allows for real-time web development, makes for easy development of the client side, server side and the database of applications much easier, it is easy to code in and pick up by beginners and also has a huge developer community.

Looking for a guide? Here is one from the developers.

Meteor is easily installed, and running the terminal command below would do the job.

sudo curl https://install.meteor.com/ | sh

That would install Meteor JS. And to check if the installation was successful, use the command below:

meteor --version

8. Express JS

36 624 ★

Earlier in the article, we talked about the Node JS framework, here is one framework that was built upon that framework.

Express JS is a flexible Node JS web application framework used for developing quality web and mobile applications.

Used majorly for building web applications and APIs, Express JS has become very popular in the JavaScript community. If you have been in the system for a while you most likely would have heard of the MEAN stack before, Express makes up the backend part of that stack.

Express JS makes the development process faster, it‘s easy to configure and customize, can be integrated with a ton of template engines and doesn‘t make a connection to databases a hassle.

Since the Express is built on the Node JS, you would be able to guess that it can be installed using the NPM tool.

npm init

Then to install and add Express to the list of dependencies:

npm install express --save

Or to install without adding Express to the list of dependencies:

npm install express --no-save

9. Chart JS

35 151 ★

In this world of big data, visualization of data has become of huge importance not just for statisticians alone but for web developers as well.

With Chart JS, you can display beautiful charts on web pages ensuring that you do not have to experience a change in the environment before visualizing data.

Chart JS is lightweight and fast, makes for the creation of responsive charts, has a very clear documentation and support as much as 8 chart types. If that isn‘t enough, Chart JS has a large user community so you can find issues to problems pretty fast.

This charting library can be installed using the npm tool, simply by using the command below:

npm install chart.js --save

10. Yarn

30 168 ★

This is a JavaScript package management tool that helps make the development process easier.

Just like React, Yarn was developed by Facebook and could be considered an improvement on the NPM tool as it parallelizes operations which npm doesn‘t and makes more efficient use of the network.

Some of the reasons for Yarn‘s popularity is its speed in execution, robust working system, availability of license checks and its incredible compatibility with the NPM and Bower package management tools.

Yarn can be installed using the npm tool:

npm install yarn --global

On Linux, it can also be installed using the command below:

curl - sS https: //dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee / etc / apt / sources.list.d / yarn.list

Then:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install yarn

It is important to note that the projects discussed in this article have gained a lot of popularity in the last year, however, this may not necessarily mean that they are the best solutions in all situations for the problems they are used to solve.

What project do you think should have made the list? What project did you use the most in 2017? Let‘s know your views.

Written by Dmitry Budko

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