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Microjs: an index of javascript micro frameworks

104 points| gbaygon | 14 years ago |microjs.com | reply

26 comments

order
[+] ramanujam|14 years ago|reply
It has now become a norm that everyone just drops in jQuery and bootstrap css for most of their projects while they might just be needing a DOM handler and a few utility functions. I have nothing against jQuery or Bootstrap. They are awesome to get things rolling but in most cases there is no necessity to load huge JS libraries with lots of utility functions which one might not be using. Not to leave aside the fact that a few third party analytics, tracking, help desk tools also load/include jQuery in their bloated script.

MicroJS is a good resource. I am wondering how many of the frameworks listed there are actively developed/maintained. Adding the last commit date information might be super useful.

[+] derefr|14 years ago|reply
> there is no necessity to load huge JS libraries with lots of utility functions which one might not be using.

I think we really need to see a tracing link-time-optimizer for Javascript code that can be run as part of an asset pipeline. Dump in your huge JS library, run your client scripts (with a thorough test suite) to detect what functions of the big library are or aren't called, then cull off the functions that aren't when writing out the final "compiled-and-linked" client library.

[+] stdbrouw|14 years ago|reply
Considering jQuery is available on Google's CDN, and lots of websites just fetch it from there, it's not necessarily true that using a smaller library will actually translate into slower load times in most cases. Similarly, if you concatenate all your javascript together, that gets rid of the main culprit where slow page loads are concerned, which is latency, not file size.
[+] latch|14 years ago|reply
I started using zepto recently, it's at 7.4k min+gziped, not the 3.3 listed on this site. Still a super useful site, it might just be slightly out of date.
[+] madrobby|14 years ago|reply
I'm the author of both MicroJS and Zepto. The sizes are automatically generated from GitHub when I deploy, usually a couple times per week.

Zepto's size includes only the core library, not additions like Ajax, Touch and so on, that's where the 3.3k number is coming from.

[+] AlexeyMK|14 years ago|reply
Very cool! I'd very much like to be able to sort by popularity, so when I'm trying to find an off-the-shelf library for something I have a general sense of what has support in the community.

I've put together a pull request which aims to accomplish this goal at https://github.com/madrobby/microjs.com/pull/232.

[+] fuzzythinker|14 years ago|reply
Since the list is so long, an "about" link on top of the page to link to the bottom would be helpful (eg. I want to find out what constitues as a "micro" framework - currently it's 5k).
[+] sad_panda|14 years ago|reply
It would be nice if I could use a minifying compiler that would strip what I don't use from JQuery, without having to also organize my JS source in a compileable form.
[+] 97s|14 years ago|reply
Thanks for this. Bookmarked so that I can use it for future reference. I am going to try out some of those one page .js frameworks soon.
[+] wahnfrieden|14 years ago|reply
Does Dojo count now with their latest release? They're supposed to have a "micro kernel" that's something like 3kb now.
[+] mhansen|14 years ago|reply
Your HTTP headers alone per requested file is probably 1KB - 3KB is still tiny.
[+] martindale|14 years ago|reply
Is the purpose of this site to highlight how easy it is to build your own framework to suit your needs?
[+] elchief|14 years ago|reply
I wonder if it's faster to learn 400 new APIs, or just use ExtJS or Dojo?
[+] handzhiev|14 years ago|reply
Great. Some kind of categorization or tagging would be really useful too.
[+] z0ot|14 years ago|reply
Wow this is cool. I will definitely use some of those at work ;) thanks!