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