The Modern Web

JavaScript Libraries

JavaScript libraries are collections of prewritten scripts that aim to reduce the cost of developing applications, and in the past few years, their number has exploded—to the point where you will rarely work on a large project where no libraries are used. From light single-purpose libraries to extensive frameworks, the range is truly wondrous. Whatever you want to do with JavaScript, the odds are good that someone has already written a library for it.

At times writing your own scripts from scratch is the best approach, especially if you don’t want the overhead of some libraries’ large file size. But when working on large teams—when having everyone work to the same standard is advantageous—or when you need to get something ...