Unheap.com: a Better jQuery Plugin Repository?

By Craig Buckler

I’ve never been particularly complimentary about the official jQuery Plugin Registry. The team are working on it, but perhaps the kindest observation is that it’s “ctional” — functional with all the “fun” removed. The system lacks an easy interface, good search facilities, online demonstrations, developer ratings and reviews.

As an alternative, why not try unheap.com — a new independent jQuery plugin repository…

The benefits of unheap.com become apparent the moment you use it:

The site has a gorgeous dynamic and responsive interface — it’s a pleasure to use
Plugins are categorized in sections and sub-sections for interface, inputs, media, navigation and miscellaneous code.
The search facility works well.
Plugin lists have direct links to demonstration pages and videos.
Related plugins are listed.
User views, votes and bug reports are recorded.
Social media sharing facilities are provided.
An RSS feed of new and updated plugins is available for you to check in ~~Google Reader~~, erm, a compatible RSS Reader.
The plugin submission process is easy and straight-forward.
Almost 700 plugins are available at the time of writing.

I’m impressed. Unless the jQuery team can produce a system as nice as unheap.com, perhaps they should give up now and adopt it as the “official” repository?

Unless you’ve found something better?…

HTML5 Dev Center, javascript, jQuery, plugins

Meet the author

Craig Buckler

Craig is a freelance UK web consultant who built his first page for IE2.0 in 1995. Since that time he's been advocating standards, accessibility, and best-practice HTML5 techniques. He's written more than 1,000 articles for SitePoint and you can find him @craigbuckler

Jack Scotty

I sure haven’t. I love Unheap.com! Awesome design on all the graphics for each plugin too.
Wietse de Vries

It sure looks better, but it’s still just a fancy link index.
I’ve already found the first dead link :(

I’d love an uniform platform that has natively supports functionality like jsbin.
This way previews are more stable, easier to play with and with the more uniform standard you can preview more efficient.
Shamrocks

So much goodness!
Michael J. Ryan

Personally, I’d prefer that people adopt/extend npm as a platform for all types of JS modules (even if not targetting NodeJS specifically). One roof for all things JS.
- Craig Buckler
  
  It’s an interesting thought, but depends on people installing Node and using command-line tools. Ultimately, many developers will still want a downloadable ZIP file.
Robert

I’m impressed. Unless the jQuery team can produce a system as nice as unheap.com, perhaps they should give up now and adopt it as the “official” repository?

+1 for adoption.
Just checked it out. I thought I’d give it a quick 5 or 10 minutes. I ended up browsing Unheap for more like an hour though. And thanks I was not aware of Unheap.
Jay Kanakiya

Another similar and older resource is http://jquer.in . Its sort of the unofficial jQuery plugins Repo.