From the front page: "JSDB is JavaScript for databases, a scripting language for data-driven, network-centric programming on Windows, Mac, Linux, and SunOS. JSDB works with databases, XML, the web, and email. It is free and open-source. Use it as a JavaScript shell, to run CGI programs, or as a web server."
But, that's kind of a silly reason right? It's obviously a general purpose server platform. Nobody would say "NodeJS/perl/ruby/python/PHP/C++/Go/Java is for databases".
I believe that jsdb.io is also a fine name for a database of js libraries. I find it easy to remember. While looking at the url might be misleading before you've visited, once you've seen the site it'll be clear.
With two unrelated projects I don't see a huge problem... People are not going to confuse the two, and I dont want to go into which is "more appropriate". Both jsdb.org and jsdb.io are completely free to name themselves as they want. No trademarks, no infringements. It was honestly a really nicely appropriate and memorable name for the service.
It was also a steal for a four letter domain name :)
Would be great to have something like this also serve up the JS files via a CDN, and provide a JS-based loader (like require.js for remote scripts). Plus maybe dependency management?
Ooh, nice; I've seen this before too but forgot all about it. @ksokhan, maybe think of linking up the CDN URL's from cdnjs.com to your site? Your site definitely offers more as far as discoverability.
- How are the ratings calculated? (Just realized that if you hover on a library's rating it tells you the rating is "derrived (sic) from combination of the other metrics": would be good to know how exactly + "derived" is misspelled.)
Ah good point on the first, and working on the second! want to be a bit more transparent, but basically, its simply a combination of the other factors listed with some logical balancing through multipliers. (ie. stars is weighted more than contributor count)
I expected the "sort by" thingy to be at the top-right of the list of things I was viewing.
Despite that minor gripe, please accept my compliments. I'd love to see a site that can point me at all the newest and most popular JS tools and maybe this can be it.
Thanks for the kind words. The sort by should only list the current page/category. You might be confused because "sort by" ignores pagination and rearranges all of the libraries in that category, and only then re-paginates it... Or am I misunderstanding your comment?
Thanks for coming back to me. Let me clarify what I mean.
When I'm on the front page or, especially, once I have selected a category, I want to be able to sort that list by newest/top-rated/last-updated/etc.
I'm used to seeing the option to do that sorting (or filtering, if you ever do that) up at the top of the things I am looking at, rather than by the list of categories.
So, the recommendation I am making is to show any sorting/filtering controls at the top of the list instead of on the left hand side of the page.
I think a tag system instead of a directory system may be better for categorizing libraries. For example, is D3 is "data / undefined". Arguably it could exist in multiple categories.
This is probably the hardest problem to solve in building a tool like this. Ive thought a lot about this, and here is my thinking:
Its not an either-or scenario. Tags are great at grouping similar libraries together, but it doesn't work very well when you look at all the tags together, since there is no clear hierarchy.
Categories are good, on the other hand, for creating a clear structure for looking for libraries. If a user is confused about where to find something specific, they can just search it.
My plan is to combine the two approaches in jsdb: have a clear and very general category system, and a tag system for finding inter-related js libraries.
Yea, the search system right now is a very basic iteration (I really just wanted to get this launched) but I definitely have plans for making it better. Typeahead is definitely one of the first things I'm going to add.
Looks more mature than JSDB.io - particularly with the larger collection of libraries and tagging system etc. But honestly your site is cluttered and ugly, JSDB is winning there. A twitter feed, really? I think your site needs some clear direction. Just saying.
Ok, I'll give some suggestions, I'll be blunt. But first you should know that I'm not a web designer - so take them with salt. It might also be worth asking for suggestions as a Hacker News thread? Or perhaps a web-design specific forum.
I'm taking an interest because I think the web development world really needs a good site to serve as a list/index/catalog of open-source javascript (and css) libraries, with user ratings and comments etc.
Fundamentally, I think the intent of your design is wrong. Its cluttered and all about the bells and whistles rather than focusing on use-cases and the problems your site should be trying to solve.
(1) Home page
Editor's Choice Part
Get rid of this, I don't think users care about your editors picks. User's care more what the user base / crowd thinks. So you could perhaps put trending libraries (those receiving a lot of up-votes recently) here instead. Or otherwise just remove it all-together.
Blog Part
Also get rid of this. The foremost parts of your homepage should be the Category list and a search box. Also get rid of the tag cloud - doesn't add anything IMO.
Layout and Color Scheme
All wrong, too many different colors and shades, jagged lines and shadows everywhere. Less is more here I think.
(2) Category Page
Layout
Change to a list-view instead of a grid-view. The grid looks too squashed, and users don't mind scrolling - list view is better for responsive design / mobile devices. Also sort the list by rating.
Each Library
Increase the font size of the description <- will work better when you change to a list view instead of a grid. Show the rating larger as well, and then to a lesser extent the GitHub stars etc. Take some design pointers from the StackOverflow question list (http://stackoverflow.com/unanswered).
(3) Library Page
Comments
Shift the DISQUS comments above the 'ALSO ON JSTER' part, put that stuff at the bottom, users care more about comments. Remove the 'RECOMMENDED CONTENT' - its irrelevant and your site is too immature for advertising yet.
Rating System
Light bulbs? I honestly think you would be better off with an up/down vote rating system like StackOverflow. A library having a 5/5 rating doesn't mean anything when there is only one vote (probably from the developer who wrote it and submitted the library).
If you wanted to make it really smart, you could allow users to up/down vote a library for specific category. For example, users could up-vote the D3.js library within the 'Charting' tag/category only if they wish to - which means the user thinks D3.js is good for charts.
http://jsdb.org/