Finding the best jquery plugins [closed]

Question

Is there a resource for finding the "best" jquery plugins, or at least just the most used ones? For example, I wanted to find a menu jquery plugin but when I goto the jquery website there are so many to look through and I don't see a way to see how popular each one is.

For ruby there's the http://ruby-toolbox.com/ which lists many plugins, how popular they are, info about them, etc. Is there something similar or at least some way to filter through all the jquery plugins?

EDIT 1: To shed some more light on this - the "most popular" link on the jquery page is useless. I can't find a way to search through it but even worse, the ratings don't seem to mean much. Ex - the first item, in other words the most popular plugin in that list has 5 stars and TWO votes. Doesn't seem like a very reliable resource to me.

Answer 1

just check here

http://plugins.jquery.com/most-popular

this has some good plugins but not ratings

http://www.jqueryplugins.com/

Answer 2

Best is so subjective. Even if tons of people are using it, it may not be "best" for your scenario. Additionally, jQuery itself evolves so quickly that lots of plugins fall by the wayside or are no longer under active development. This makes it hard to keep a "master list" of high-quality jQuery plugins.

What I've done in the past is done a Google search or SO search for the functionality I'm looking for, and then do the following:

1. Look at the date of the most recent release. Is the plugin under active development?
2. Look at the API. Is there robust functionality? Is the API intuitive and easy to learn?
3. Check out how well the plugin is supported. What kinds of questions are being asked? Are people asking about functionality that you're looking for?
4. Do some basic research by whipping up a working example and seeing how difficult it was and what obstacles I ran into.

This process usually leaves me with just a few options.

I've noticed several of my team's needs for jQuery extensions fall under the following categories, and are satisfied by the following plugins:

• Validation: jQuery validate
• UI/Animations not native to jQuery: jQueryUI (highly recommend)
• Asynchronous file uploading: jQuery form plugin

(there are probably more than this, I'll continue adding as I think of them)

For anything simple, consider rolling your own jQuery plugin. It's surprisingly easy, and you get control over how it works and the API. That said, you don't want to reinvent the wheel.

I know this answer doesn't directly answer your question, but it's a result of me having the same question and realizing the above.