Meet the long-awaited plugins.jquery.com

The jQuery plug-in registry has long since become a graveyard. Over the past few years, it has become frightening to move around, names have ceased to be read on the graves of the once popular libraries, and only gusts of cold wind and strange shadows flashing between the marble slabs could expect an accidental traveler who chose his way through this resource.

Fortunately, the realm of despondency and fear has come to an end. Meet the reborn, beautiful and convenient, useful, logical and usable jQuery Plugin Registry
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Following the recent update of the resource with the documentation , we have a completely new plugins.jquery.com, which until today has caused only pity.

Redesign

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Pages of the site received a new design. It has become more spacious, a bit lighter (although the general gloom is not in a hurry to leave), but the main thing is that it has made it much easier to find interesting plugins and determine their mental health.



The plugin profile contains information about the author and releases, links to documentation and the repository, and also he is able to tell about the activity and relevance of the development. If someone is not familiar with the specifics, I explain: if there are a lot of releases, the last one is recent, and the repository is being watched and actively forked, then it is definitely useful for someone other than the owner.

The screenshot above shows the plugin with "5 watchers" and "2 forks" - already better than nothing. Although the rest of the information is still difficult to judge something, because all releases on the portal begin their countdown from 01/17/2013.

Changes in mechanics

The team worked on the portal not only externally. The main idea has shifted. Publishing plugins and working on them together has become much easier. If earlier it was necessary to send your code for approval, and its publication was a purely closed action (because of what, in part, the projects died in obscurity), now everything is simpler and more transparent.

This was achieved through the adoption of three agreements: on the naming of the plugin , on publication and on packaging .

Publication

Plugins are no longer stored directly on the resource. They are collected and distributed directly from the repository by adding a regular git tag. GitHub is still being used as a repository storage platform, but the official announcement said that the list of resources with which the Registry is integrated will be expanded. By the way, you can assist in this process - the source code of all resources has been opened, and a team in your blog suggests that you join the development.

Package manifest

The manifest of the package with the plugin was described , from which its page on the resource will be automatically collected. It contains mandatory information - title, version, title, author name, dependencies and license, as well as some optional fields.

Conclusion

I hope that nightmares will no longer torment any of the jQuery users, the gallery and slider population will no longer grow, and the updated plugins.jquery.com will become something like rubygems.org (or The Ruby Toolbox , as suggested in the comments) for the language ruby will promote the natural evolution of good libraries and the burial (with corresponding honors) of bad ones.

I want to remind you that a dozen or two fly in the ointment will still be found in the barrel of honey, so do not forget to report errors and make suggestions - now this is a full-fledged OpenSource project, managed by the community.