4 JavaScript Experts Pick Their Favorites
“Technically, web browsers can control what users see, and sites using JavaScript can overwrite anything coming from the original authors. Browsers heavily utilize JavaScript to create an interactive Internet; sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Gmail could be crippled without it.”
– Ben Shapiro
JavaScript does not really need a whole lot of introduction; we think Ben Shapiro’s quote sums it up pretty nicely.
Currently a property of the Oracle Corporation, JS was originally developed by Brendan Eich while working at Netscape Communications Corporation, and was released as a beta under the name LiveScript in 1995. It adopted its now iconic name with the release of the 2.0B3 version of the Netscape browser.
In a very short time, JavaScript became quite popular, leading to Microsoft’s introduction of JS support for their own browser, Internet Explorer 3.0, in 1996. Also in 1996, Netscape submitted JS to Ecma International, for consideration to become the industry standard. The result was the standardized version called ECMAScript.
In today’s article, we will be showing you a few websites that experts Jack Franklin, Ray Bango, Ady Osmani, and Stephen Fulljames have personally picked out as their favorites, in terms of their use of JavaScript. To see the complete list done for CreativeBloq, check out the article by clicking this link.
1. Multeor
“Multeor is a multiplayer web game developed by Arjen de Vries and Filidor Wiese and designed by Arthur van ‘t Hoog. The idea of the game is to control a meteor crashing into earth. You score points by ensuring you leave the biggest trail of destruction. Up to eight players can connect to a single game simultaneously.”
2. Here is Today
“Here is Today was created by designer Luke Twyman. He explains the motive behind the site: ‘Being fascinated by the scale of time, I wanted to create something that would clearly give people a sense of that vastness, and a feeling of where we sit in relation to all that’s gone before. To do this, two important features on the technical side would be some kind of zooming/scaling mechanic, and also a super clean layout.’”
3. The Trip
“The Trip is an interactive film with audio, powered entirely through HTML5 and JavaScript (with Flash nowhere to be seen). The complexity of the project proved challenging, as developer Otto Nascarella explains. He says, ‘Most of the difficulties we had during the development process were due to the lack of cross browser/devices consistency of HTML5 new technologies, so it was decided we’d recommend Chrome for a better experience on desktops.'”
4. Nick Jones
“Nick Jones’s redesigned site caught our eye with some clever animations. Jones has more experience in Flash, but tried the JavaScript route to see what it’s capable of. ‘Once I got started, I realized the syntax is the same as ActionScript, so the transition felt totally natural after only a short time,’ he told us. ‘Access to the mouse wheel is something I never had in Flash, so it was a fun new interaction to play with.’”
5. Command & Conquer
“This is an amazing example of how powerful today’s tools are. Aditya Ravi Shankar has used them to create an online version of classic real-time strategy game Command and Conquer.”
6. Red Bull Music Academy
“Red Bull is the energy drink that keeps fingers moving during late-night coding sessions: couple it with music and you have an awesome setting for code cranking. Looks like Red Bull gets this: its Red Bull Music Academy Radio brings kickass beats to your browser.”
7. Nouvelle Vague
“Nouvelle Vague is a fascinating way to follow the journey of your tweets from French web design agency Ultranoir. In addition to being a useful tool implemented with JavaScript, Nouvelle Vague also features some gorgeous WebGL animations thanks to Daniel Salazar and Cedric Pinson.”
8. Kindle Cloud Reader
“The new web app makes ‘buy once, read everywhere’ a reality. It utilizes client-side technologies and libraries including HTML5 and its related JavaScript APIs, the jQuery and jQuery UI JavaScript libraries, several jQuery plug-ins and home-grown source code to finally piece things together.”
9. Pinterest
“Pinterest has got a lot of positive press lately and when you look at the site, you can see why. The layout allows users to ‘pin’ images to a virtual pinboard shared with the rest of the community.”
10. The Michelberger Booze
“From the very beginning, you see a preloader being used that would leave you to believe it’s Flash-based. It’s not! The preloader, a glass that gets filled with beer as the page loads, is actually an HTML5 canvas-based rendering that gets loaded via JavaScript.”
11. Trello
“Showing the polar opposite of cutting-edge JavaScript, Trello is a Kanban-style collaboration tool created by Fog Creek. Users can create task boards with ‘to do’, ‘in progress’ and ‘done’ states and share progress with teams in real- time.”
12. BrowserQuest
“Created by Little Workshop for Mozilla, BrowserQuest is a loving homage to RPG video games designed as a demonstration of HTML5 and technologies such as WebSockets, which can support hundreds or even thousands of simultaneous users interacting.”
13. Timeline
“The timeline builder by Vrit.co for the Knight News Innovation Lab, is billed as being easy and intuitive to use. Users can pull in tweets and media from YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Google Maps, and SoundCloud.”
14. jsPerf
“A project by a 2011.net Award nominee for developer of the year, Mathias Bynens, jsPerf provides us with an easy way to create and share test cases that benchmark the performance of different JavaScript snippets.”
15. Draw a Stickman
“The basic idea is that you’re given a virtual drawing pad, on which you can use your mouse to create little doodles. But it goes way beyond that.”
16. The Interactive Ear
“The Interactive Ear was created by Leeds-based agency Epiphany Solutions for its client Amplifon, which specializes in hearing aids, tests and solutions for the hard of hearing, and is targeted at both primary and secondary school level education.”
17. Violin
“Violin is a project by developer Philip Roberts that sets out to represent the structure of a JavaScript application and how the pieces interact by graphing them and animating them when they are used.”
18. Glimpse
“Glimpse Catalogs is a merging of The Find’s shopping search engine and its successful social shopping app on Facebook. Items are displayed in a Pinterest-style layout, with the focus on image and minimal product details. Clicking the image provides a pop-up box containing full information.”
19. Mike Kus
“Here designer Mike Kus presents his stunning work in a refreshingly clean and understated manner, in which large images live alongside simple user interface elements. Bold dashes of color come through from the portfolio items themselves, rather than from unnecessary decorative element.”
20. CrimeTimeline
“The CrimeTimeline is a weekend hack project from developers at agency Cyber-Duck. The project uses public APIs to pull in data about crime in Britain and enables the user to review their local area.”
That concludes our short presentation on 4 experts’ favorite websites. Once again, if you want to see the full list, head on over to CreativeBloq to read the full article. Also, don’t forget to leave us your thoughts in the comment section below.
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