5 Ways to Contribute to Your Favorite JavaScript Framework

By  on  

While you may not be a core member of any of the JavaScript frameworks, there are many ways that you can help contribute to the framework and team. Here are just a few.

Submit a Ticket / Patch

If you run into a framework defect, please submit a ticket. A problem cannot get fixed if the framework creators are not aware of the problem. Test hard before you submit your ticket and if the problem sticks, submit it.

Help Out in the Framework Forums

The framework creators help users as best they can, but they can't help everyone with everything. If you have some expertise and run past a question you can answer in the forums, take the time to help them. Not only will you help the person that asks the question, but hundreds of others who eventually run into the same problem.

Interact on IRC

The IRC chat room for the framework is always live with questions -- probably a few questions you can answer. You can also pitch suggestions and patches to the framework creators in the chat room, as well as garner the opinions of others.

Share Your Scripts

Whether you create a blog or post your code in the community forums, sharing your code is a great way improve your code (by suggestions from others) and save others time and the peril of trying to reinvent the wheel.

Don't Discredit Other Frameworks

Insulting other framework creators and their users does not do your framework of choice any good. It makes you sound ignorant and gives your favorite framework's community a bad name.

Did I miss something? Tell me what I missed!

Recent Features

  • By
    I’m an Impostor

    This is the hardest thing I've ever had to write, much less admit to myself.  I've written resignation letters from jobs I've loved, I've ended relationships, I've failed at a host of tasks, and let myself down in my life.  All of those feelings were very...

  • By
    CSS Filters

    CSS filter support recently landed within WebKit nightlies. CSS filters provide a method for modifying the rendering of a basic DOM element, image, or video. CSS filters allow for blurring, warping, and modifying the color intensity of elements. Let's have...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Chris Coyier’s Favorite CodePen Demos IV

    Did you know you can triple-heart things on CodePen? We’ve had that little not-so-hidden feature forever. You can click that little heart button on any Pen (or Project, Collection, or Post) on CodePen to show the creator a little love, but you can click it again...

  • By
    MooTools 1.2 Image Protector: dwProtector

    Image protection is a hot topic on the net these days, and why shouldn't it be? If you spent two hours designing an awesome graphic, would you want it ripped of in matter of seconds? Hell no! That's why I've created an image...

Discussion

  1. 6 – Contribute modules/plugins/extensions! Today’s popular JS frameworks are becoming increasingly modular and extensible – building extensions help you hone your ability as a developer to create reusable solutions, and is a practical way to give back to the community at large. Great topic David – community involvement is the beating heart of open source projects.

  2. Thanks. I got a couple ides from this post that I included in my project’s contributing page

    http://wiki.architecturerules.org/index.php?title=Contributing

    I added the Community header and content after reading your Interact on IRC and Help Out in the Framework Forums. Thanks.

  3. I’ve noticed the biggest abusers of #5 are the people that know the least about their own framework in general.

    And my biggest beef with fellow developers are some feel like they can’t publish their code until it’s finalized, and then sit on a wealth of plugins and wonderful code that never sees light because “they’re alpha.”

  4. Good post

  5. These are all wonderful ideas! Thanks for the article.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!