Like all lists, they are good when short (Funny, I just twitted about this morning @TheRegge). Long lists hard for me to efficiently bookmark them in Delicious. I have noticed like many others, that the jQuery lists are extremely repetitive... I guess because, after working with jQuery just a little while, it's relatively easy to reproduce most of those plugins with your own code, which to my opinion feels much better and makes the plugin production relatively dry. Wordpress plugins are more complex and often times more interesting for the single front end developer.
I think they are a huge help to people who don't have a huge desire to get into the nitty gritty and find the best tool for their project. I think there is definitely a place for them, but I pretty much ignore them myself.
A few of us have considered this for a while, but what would be infinitely more helpful (to everybody) is a central place where _all_ plugins could be submitted and reviewed and ranked by the community. You could create the 'Top 10' lists and keep them dynamically updated. I can't count how many times I've come across top 10 lists that are outdated, or just wrong.
Having a single place, with community input (and maybe some 'pro recommended' sections or something) would solve most of those problems right away. I know the plugins section of jquery.com kind of has all of this, but it's mainly lacking in the ability to easily show the best plugin for a specific job (rather than the closest matched search result).
Instead of 10 lists that give me different plugins that are the 'top' for a single category - how about one list that's got all of the lists' inputs, that doesn't get old and outdated?
There is clearly a 'market' or 'desire' for these types of posts (regardless of my affinity towards them), so I vote that we try to make sure that when we do have this sort of stuff out there, that they are at least correct.
Nate - 14 years ago
I love being introduced to new plugins, but those lists tend to be huge, time consuming to follow and are sometimes repetitive. I think it's better to single out exceptional plugins or choose Top ## lists sparingly.
It depends completely on the quality. The overwhelming majority of them are just noise at this point, because people know it's a shortcut to getting traffic without putting much effort in.
However, they can be useful when done well. I think the litmus test is whether or not they contain copy-pasted text. If descriptions are just copied from the plugin's website (or worse, no text at all as is not uncommon), the list is probably worthless.
If I have to choose one option though, Janko said it best: http://www.jankoatwarpspeed.com/post/2009/11/27/things-I-like-about-list-posts.aspx
Top jquery plugins on each category with brief text on their pros and cons will be much helpful than a flat list
Not every jQuery plugin is relevant to what I do, so that's why I went w/ "sometimes".
Like all lists, they are good when short (Funny, I just twitted about this morning @TheRegge). Long lists hard for me to efficiently bookmark them in Delicious. I have noticed like many others, that the jQuery lists are extremely repetitive... I guess because, after working with jQuery just a little while, it's relatively easy to reproduce most of those plugins with your own code, which to my opinion feels much better and makes the plugin production relatively dry. Wordpress plugins are more complex and often times more interesting for the single front end developer.
I think they are a huge help to people who don't have a huge desire to get into the nitty gritty and find the best tool for their project. I think there is definitely a place for them, but I pretty much ignore them myself.
A few of us have considered this for a while, but what would be infinitely more helpful (to everybody) is a central place where _all_ plugins could be submitted and reviewed and ranked by the community. You could create the 'Top 10' lists and keep them dynamically updated. I can't count how many times I've come across top 10 lists that are outdated, or just wrong.
Having a single place, with community input (and maybe some 'pro recommended' sections or something) would solve most of those problems right away. I know the plugins section of jquery.com kind of has all of this, but it's mainly lacking in the ability to easily show the best plugin for a specific job (rather than the closest matched search result).
Instead of 10 lists that give me different plugins that are the 'top' for a single category - how about one list that's got all of the lists' inputs, that doesn't get old and outdated?
There is clearly a 'market' or 'desire' for these types of posts (regardless of my affinity towards them), so I vote that we try to make sure that when we do have this sort of stuff out there, that they are at least correct.
I love being introduced to new plugins, but those lists tend to be huge, time consuming to follow and are sometimes repetitive. I think it's better to single out exceptional plugins or choose Top ## lists sparingly.
I find them quite useful, I've found some amazingly useful plugins through them.
True, some of them are out dated, and they do tend to be redundant, but they still tend to be quite useful, at least to me.
It depends completely on the quality. The overwhelming majority of them are just noise at this point, because people know it's a shortcut to getting traffic without putting much effort in.
However, they can be useful when done well. I think the litmus test is whether or not they contain copy-pasted text. If descriptions are just copied from the plugin's website (or worse, no text at all as is not uncommon), the list is probably worthless.
If I have to choose one option though, Janko said it best: http://www.jankoatwarpspeed.com/post/2009/11/27/things-I-like-about-list-posts.aspx
Top plugins posts can rely on plugins that goes unused sometime after. They actually can indicate discontinued plugins saying they're the best.
If you're looking for best plugins posts you should pay attention when they were posted. This is a kind important.
An example is the thickbox plugin.
They can be really redundant at times, recirculating the same plugins over and over again which gets old really fast.