How to Find Plugins

There are literally thousands of jQuery plugins to choose from. 0:00 Some are good, some are bad, and some are just plain awful. 0:04 Often the hardest part of jQuery plugins is finding a good plugin that does what 0:07 you want it to and is still maintained by the person who created it. 0:12 In this video, I'll show you a few places you can look for plugins and 0:15 some of the things you should take into consideration when selecting a plugin. 0:19 Let's go. 0:23 Of course, the easiest place to start finding anything on the web is Google, and 0:24 you certainly can find a lot of matches when you search for jQuery plugins. 0:28 This isn't necessarily the worst way to go, but 0:33 there are better places to find jQuery plugins. 0:36 The jQuery Plugin Repository sponsored by the jQuery project used to be the go to 0:39 place for finding plugins. 0:44 But they're shutting it down, in fact, 0:46 in might already be gone by the time you're watching this video. 0:48 However, there are other plugin directories that you can use. 0:52 For example, SitePoint's popular jQuery plugins list 0:55 provides categories of jQuery plugins that you can look through. 0:58 You'll still need to look at the plugin and determine if it's a good one, 1:02 that's something I'll talk about in just a minute. 1:05 Unheap is another great site to discover new plugins. 1:09 They have over 1,000 plugins listed and provide quick links to demos and 1:12 downloads for each. 1:16 But how do you know if a plugin's any good? 1:18 Well, there are a few things you should be on the lookout for. 1:20 First, you wanna find a plugin that does something you need. 1:23 That might seem obvious, but it's easy to get sucked into adding a bunch of jQuery 1:28 plugins to a site just because they look cool. 1:32 The more plugins you add, the more files your visitors will have to download, and 1:35 the slower your site will feel. 1:39 While it's important to create sites that are fun, engaging, and 1:41 interactive, don't go overboard. 1:44 Let's check out this plugin. 1:48 This is the full screen, vertical scroll plugin, FSVS for short. 1:50 It creates a nice scroll effect for sections of a page. 1:56 This looks cool. 2:00 I might want to add something like this to my site. 2:01 The next thing to look for is clear documentation. 2:05 While most plugins are easy to use, 2:07 you'll usually still need clear guidance on how to structure your HTML and 2:10 any configuration options offered by the plugin. 2:14 This one seems pretty easy, the documentation is right here on this page. 2:17 It shows how to call the plugin, how to structure your HTML so 2:20 it works with the plugin and lists the options available for 2:24 configuring how the plugins work, nice. 2:28 Next you want to see how old the plugin is, and if it's still being developed. 2:33 For example, if you find a great plugin but 2:37 it was created five years ago and hasn't been updated for the past four years, 2:39 you can probably assume that the plugin author has abandoned the project. 2:43 That means the plugin might not work in current web browsers, and 2:48 any bugs you discover won't be fixed unless you decide to fix them. 2:51 Usually you'll find something on the site, or in the documentation that lets you know 2:56 when the plugin was created, and if it's still being worked on. 2:59 Many, but not all plugins are hosted on GitHub. 3:03 GitHub is a site for sharing and collaborating on open source software. 3:06 GitHub provides lots of statistics about a project. 3:11 For example, this plugin is hosted on GitHub, let's take a look. 3:14 This project looks like it's active, you can also see that there are several people 3:19 who have contributed to the project. 3:23 That's good. 3:25 More than one person is helping to create and improve the plugin. 3:26 There are a couple of other things that are good to look for in a plugin too. 3:30 These aren't absolutely required, but 3:34 in the changing world of web design, they are helpful. 3:35 Look for plugins that are responsive. 3:38 That means they work with responsively designed pages, that is, pages that 3:41 adapt to different screen resolutions from small phones to televisions. 3:46 If you're not familiar with responsive web design, 3:50 we have a few videos about it here at Treehouse. 3:52 Look in the teacher's notes for links and 3:55 more information about responsive web design. 3:57 It's also good if a plugin is mobile friendly. 4:00 That is, it's designed to work with mobile devices, phones and tablets. 4:03 That usually means the plugin will work with touch gestures, 4:08 like a finger swipe or a pinch. 4:11 Let's see, 4:13 this plugin isn't affected by the width of a page because it's just first scrolling 4:14 down, that means it will probably work fine with responsive designs. 4:18 However, it looks like they're having problems getting it to work with mobile 4:22 devices. 4:26 That might be a problem. 4:27 If I'm building a site that I expect or hope will get a lot of traffic from mobile 4:28 users, then I should skip this plugin, at least until it's made to work on mobile. 4:32 Now be careful picking plugins. 4:37 If you find one that will be a big part of your website, you need to make sure it's 4:39 being actively developed, fits your needs, and will work for all your site's users. 4:42 In the next video, we'll look at the plugin that we'll be using in this 4:47 section of the course, and you'll learn how plugin files are usually organized. 4:50