Cool JavaScript Libraries To Consider Using in 2023

JavaScript libraries are incredibly useful tools for any web app developer. They’re designed for boosting the development process and adding extra functionality to your projects with just a few lines of code.

Today, there’s almost a never-ending collection of JS libraries and frameworks to try, so we picked 20 cool tools for data visualization, animation, form validation, mapping, file uploading, etc. Let’s take a closer look!

DHTMLX offers a set of JavaScript components for building user-friendly web apps. It allows integrating Gantt chart, Scheduler, Kanban board, or any other widget into an existing app separately, or combining them thus creating a comprehensive front-end system from scratch. DHTMLX provides clean UI and comprehensive APIs, so you can easily configure widgets’ behavior or customize their appearance by adding custom CSS. You can set dynamic loading, intuitive drag-n-drop, and handy keyboard navigation, as well as export data to Excel, PDF, SVG, PNG, MS Project, and other formats.

Bootstrap is a CSS framework for creating nice-looking web projects. It contains JavaScript/HTML-based design templates for buttons, forms, layouts, navigation, and other UI components. Bootstrap is responsive, meaning it looks proper on most gadgets, from desktops to iPhones. As of April 2023, Bootstrap has over 163K stars, being one of the top 5 most starred libraries on GitHub.

Data-Driven Documents or D3.js is a collection of modular libraries for building dynamic data visualizations in web browsers. It supports a data-driven approach to DOM manipulations, providing you with a lot of control over how your web page will look. Thus, for example, you can use D3.js to generate an HTML table from an array of numbers. You can also use the same data to create an interactive SVG bar chart with smooth transitions and interaction.

Charts.js includes 8 types of the most-used charts with flexible customization options. Plus, you can use additional community-maintained charts while also combining several types into a mixed chart to provide a really interesting data set.

It’s a vector graphics scripting framework that runs on top of the HTML5 Canvas. Paper.js offers a clean DOM and a powerful functionality to create and work with vector graphics and bezier curves, all elegantly wrapped up in a well-designed, clean programming interface.

Anime.js is one of the best JavaScript animation libraries which allows for easily integrating stunning follow-through animations into your project. It works well with CSS properties, SVG, DOM attributes, and JavaScript Objects, making it super versatile. The library comes with a clean API and thorough documentation. It also provides a built-in staggering system, which makes follow-through and overlapping animations simple.

TweenJS is a simple library for tweening and animating HTML5 and JavaScript. It supports the tweening of both numeric object properties and CSS style properties. You can also chain two tweens and actions together to create more complex sequences.

PixiJS aims to provide a fast lightweight 2D library for creating splendid digital content. You can develop games and interactive animation-based websites that will work across multiple platforms, including mobile and desktop. PixiJS comes with advanced support for features like rotational packing, trimming, and anti-aliased text rendering.

For those who are interested in 3D design, Three.js is a great library to play around with. It allows you to create incredible projects and bring any design to life. The current version includes WebGL and WebGPU (experimental) renders. However, SVG and CSS3D renders are available as add-ons.

Floating UI will help you to easily anchor floating elements (such as tooltips, popovers, or dropdowns) on top of the UI, ensuring it will stay in view as optimal as possible by avoiding collisions. In addition to positioning, the library provides interaction primitives to create accessible floating UI components with React.

howler.js is a popular (with 22.5K stars on GitHub) library for working with audio in the browser. It supports a wide range of audio formats, including MP3, MP4, MPEG, OPUS, WEBA, WEBM, DOLBY, etc., and has a lot of useful features like cross-fading, looping, and spatial audio. The library defaults to Web Audio API and falls back to HTML5 Audio thus allowing users to work with audio in JavaScript easily across all platforms.

Video.js web video player supports HTML5 video and Media Source Extensions, as well as modern streaming formats, YouTube, and Vimeo. The player skin is built with HTML and CSS, so you can easily modify its appearance by adding new classes or installing community-backed skins or plugins.

Leaflet is a completely open-source JavaScript mapping library for integrating mobile-friendly interactive maps. It has a basic feature set, including zoom scrolling, marker dragging, and keyboard navigation, and works efficiently with modern browsers while being accessible on older ones too. Besides, you can extend its functionality with multiple plugins.

fullPage.js helps you to build fullscreen scrolling single-page websites. The library provides multiple customization options, touch support, and a set of extensions you can use to enhance its default features. fullPage.js provides lazy loading, so that images, videos, and audio elements get loaded when displaying in the viewport.

Parsley focuses on front-end form validation. It automatically detects modifications in forms and then adapts them accordingly. The library has an intuitive DOM API and works on generally all web browsers. It comes with dozens of built-in commonly used validators but you’re able to add a custom one.

Currency. js is a lightweight (about 1kb) library for working with currency values. It allows performing all the basic arithmetic operations without being concerned about decimal precision. The library works with different types of inputs, strings, numbers, and other currency instances. It provides flexible formatting, so you can customize default USD-conformed options according to your locale.

Math.js is an extensive JavaScript and Node.js library for displaying math notations in web browsers. It allows working with different data types, including complex numbers, fractions, units, arrays, and matrices, and features a flexible expression parser with support for symbolic computation. The library comes with a large set of built-in functions and constants.

With Carbon, you can create and share modifiable images of your source code. Having imported your code into Carbon, you can customize your image by changing the syntax and window themes, background color, padding, fonts, and more. Any Carbon snippet can be embedded in the website, shared on Twitter, or downloaded in PNG or SVG formats.

Feather is a collection of 287 simple concise icons. Each icon is designed on a 24x24 grid and colored in black. However, you can configure their appearance before downloading by changing size, stroke width, and color. Moreover, Feather is available as a Figma component library so you can easily duplicate the file to your drafts.

Devices.css showcases modern mobile devices created in pure CSS. It includes mobile devices like iPhone14 and Google Pixel, computers, tablets, and watches. All devices use the same HTML structure and allow setting desirable colors via their classes.

In conclusion, the world of JavaScript libraries is wide and constantly evolving. From popular UI frameworks like Bootstrap, D3.js, and DHTMLX, to specialized libraries for audio processing or data animation, there is no shortage of options to choose from. 

By taking advantage of these tools, you can save time and effort while creating more robust and feature-rich web apps. So keep exploring and experimenting with the cool JavaScript libraries out there, and see what amazing things you can create.