Request for tools.js.org

[ETHproductions]

I've just started a community-focused project to provide a place for JavaScript users to easily find the plugins/libraries/frameworks/whatever they need to help with their projects. You can find it here: tools-js.github.io repo

I've put about a full day's work into it, though it doesn't have many commits because I only uploaded it to GitHub an hour ago. You can preview it at https://tools-js.github.io. As of this writing, it only has data on jQuery, AngularJS, JSHint, and JSLint.

Though it's barely in the alpha stage, I'd like to set it up on the tools.js.org subdomain. I think that with a cleaner domain name (https://tools.js.org compared to https://tools-js.github.io), it will gather more attention and hopefully better serve its purpose.

Here's my ideal subdomains for this project, in descending order:

• tools.js.org
• tool.js.org
• toolsearch.js.org and variants
• findtools.js.org and variants

Thoughts?

[indus]

Have you had a look at similar pages - https://www.javascripting.com?
Discovery is a task hard to tackle, but I think they do a good job with their curated list of popular frontend libraries already. No offense, I think the weak point of your page could be that there is no sorting. If you are going to accept every small library that has been or will be written it may become a unusable mess pretty soon (searching for "DOM" -> getting 200+ libs -> :-( ).

javascripting.com tries to stay focused with this note above the submission form:

Please make sure the submission is a clientside library,
and has at least 80 stars on Github.

But you said your project is in alpha stage, so you probably have some features in mind that will ensure a good UX. But nevertheless from what I can see right now I would doubt that your page could get enough drag to become a vivid thing.

The second problem I have is in fact the name you propose. When I hear of "tools", I think of "developer tools" like IDEs, editors and other coding tools like linters, minifiers, transpilers, bundlers, CI, versioning, deployment etc.
I have seen linters in your database but when I came accross Angular and jQuery I wouldn´t have thought about them as "tools" but would have refered to them as "libraries" or "libs".
Haven´t come across a page that is purly focused on "(dev) tools" but have seen a bunch of others I personaly think it could be favourable to stick to exact this field, and make it as usefull as possible (drag-and-drop to combine modules to a personal setup or something like that?)

So thats what I would expect as a user:
tools.js.org: The tools a dev needs to write and deploy code
libs.js.org: Front- and back-end side code packages (frontend.libs.js.org / backend.libs.js.org ?)
search.js.org: A search over all the JS packages out there (linking to tools.js.org/libs.js.org)

As said, right now I can´t see how your page could scale, and therefore I wouldn´t want to release one of the restricted ones. But you can always request for one of the combined ones (toolsearch, findtools, etc.) right now and I would be happy to give you one of them.

Maybe someone else wnats to join this discussion?

[ETHproductions]

Thanks for the feedback. I hadn't seen JavaScripting, but that seems to be close to what I'm trying to accomplish. The main difference currently (other than the lack of resources) is that my project is more search-oriented, which may be its only advantage. JavaScripting has a huge advantage because the entries are automatically generated.

I think the weak point of your page could be that there is no sorting. If you are going to accept every small library that has been or will be written it may become a unusable mess pretty soon (searching for "DOM" -> getting 200+ libs -> :-( ).

There is a little bit of sorting already; it sorts by how well each project fits the search string. Incorporating the number of stars on the project into the sorting algorithm might make it easier to find popular tools that fit your needs.

When I hear of "tools", I think of "developer tools" like IDEs, editors and other coding tools like linters, minifiers, transpilers, bundlers, CI, versioning, deployment etc.
I have seen linters in your database but when I came accross Angular and jQuery I wouldn´t have thought about them as "tools" but would have refered to them as "libraries" or "libs".

I definitely see your point. My original goal was to include all types of "tools" that you mentioned, and also libraries. Seeing as how JavaScripting covers libraries pretty extensively, I agree that it may be best to not include libraries in this project and instead focus exclusively on real "tools".

(drag-and-drop to combine modules to a personal setup or something like that?)

Could you please elaborate on this? I'm not quite sure how you envision it.

[vihanb]

@ETHproductions i assume he means you can drag and drop modules from the list to a "my tools" area, which will have a download button to download a zip with a prefilled package.json, filled with all the boilerplate and scripts. (Thats how i envision it atleast)

[indus]

looks like @vihanb knows what I mean better then I do ;-)
Maybe I was thinking about something like yeoman to make it easy to setup a new project (I do this quite often and it always costs me a lot of time because they are often quite different). In contrast to a complete boilerplate I would enjoy a toolbox of modules to pick from and combine.
But dont´t take that to serious. It was just one idea what "tools.js.org" could be...

[ETHproductions]

That sounds cool, but I thought you said tools.js.org would better fit a collection of tools, not libraries. Am I misunderstanding something?

[indus]

I thought about tools like linters a live-server etc. when I talked a modules and the toolbox

[ETHproductions]

Interesting idea. One thing I still don't understand what a package.json would be for. Perhaps I just don't have enough knowledge about using tools like these; I certainly don't have much experience with them.

[indus]

see https://docs.npmjs.com/files/package.json

the ability to declare dependencies and to run scripts is what looks most beneficial to me. I´m closing this now because I think this discussion should be going on in your project repo. As said in the moment I´m not willing to release "tool(s),js,org".

[ETHproductions]

Sorry; I've started a discussion in my repo.