JavaScript Zeitgeist 2011 - What JavaScript Developers have been Searching for in 2011?

Contents

Conclusion

What is the JavaScript Zeitgeist?

If you are an user of the PHPClasses site, you may already be aware that this is a similar initiative to the PHP Zeitgeist also described in a recent article published in that site about PHP Zeitgeist 2011. So this article is mostly similar to the one about PHP.

The JavaScript Zeitgeist is an initiative meant to determine what JavaScript developers have been more interested in the recent times.

It is also similar to the Google Zeitgeist initiative, except that it is based on searches done by JavaScript developers on the JSClasses site.

How does the JavaScript Zeitgeist works?

Many thousands of users have accessed and searched for JavaScript components since the JSClasses site was started in 2010. The sites takes note of the keywords used to search the site.

Every year the site builds the top most searched keywords. Then it compares the list of the top searched keywords of the last year with the similar list of the previous year.

The top 100 keywords that appeared in last year ranking but did not appear in the previous year are considered the trending searches. These top keywords are displayed in the JavaScript Zeitgeist page.

What are the most relevant trends of JavaScript in 2011?

This is the first year that the JavaScript Zeitgeist information is published. The site was launched in 2010, so only now we have two years of search statistics to compare.

As consequence of this fact, the trending searches are still some of the most popular searches in 2011 that were not yet on the top 2010 searches.

It is still possible to denote some themes in the top trending keywords. One of the most evident is related with Google Maps API (Google map, gmap).

Another strong theme is related with image generation and manipulation (svg, image resize, effect, resize, image crop, qrcode, crop image, resize image).

Some frameworks seem to also have gained momentum like Appcelerator, PDFKit, NodeJS, sarissa.js and FancyBox.

Gadgets of all sorts seem to keep having great interest to enhance user interfaces like accordion, gauge and timepicker.

Suggestions for New Components to be Submitted

One of the most interesting uses of building the JavaScript Zeitgeist is to find out what interesting components have great demand but currently there are no components available in the JSClasses.

This provides a great opportunity for contributors to submit interesting components that will be well appreciated.

If you look into the JavaScript Zeitgeist and find keywords for which no results are returned in the JSClasses search page, chances are that you have found a topic for components that will have great interest for the JSClasses users and JavaScript developers in general.

If you submit new components for the purposes related with those search keywords, many users will come to download those components and you can rank high in the JSClasses top charts.

Here are some of the top most interesting keywords for which currently there are no components in the JSClasses site:

• Gantt chart
• Flow chart
• Time picker
• MD5
• Serial port
• Audio
• Validate VAT

• PHP.js
• PDO
• PHPXBase
• RSS reader PHP

Conclusion

It seems that there were no big surprises in the JavaScript Zeitgeist this year, which seems normal for a first edition.

Nevertheless it is always curious and useful to learn what are the current trends about JavaScript, which is a language that practically all Web developers use.

Lets see what happens next year. For now I do not want to guess what will be the trends of JavaScript Zeitgeist next year. Feel free to post a comment about what you think will be the next edition trends or tell what you thought about first year of this initiative.