Examples of good JavaScript code in open source web apps

Question

I'm struggling to find a way of writing good JavaScript code that would be efficient, widely accepted by other developers and not very ugly.

Until recently, what I used were just literal objects and bits of jQuery but after reading Douglas Crockford's "JavaScript: The Good Parts" I now fully realize that there's more to JavaScript than AJAX, DOM modifications and simple animation.

The problem is that JavaScript seems not much standarized. The amount of OOP/inheritance patterns available overwhelms me. I'm not used to every framework/library providing its own impementation of inheritance. I also don't want to make a wrong decision regarding such things because this would mean rewriting all the code in case of some problems.

So what I'm looking for are existing open source web applications that use JavaScript heavily, if possible on the client side, to see what patterns are used in real projects. I would like to see the code of web applications, not frameworks or libraries. I don't mind though if those web apps are based on some framework (and if it's Dojo or RequireJS it'll be even better because I'm using them ;)

Answer 1

What I always recommend to anyone who is interested in this kind of thing is: STICK TO WHAT YOUR TEAM DOES. If they use camelCase for methods, you use it. If they use snake_case for variables, you do it. If your team prefers spaces over tabs; use them.

Never go into a stablished team with standardized style changing things because it looks better unless it's causing heavy problems.

If you're not working on a team and you're interested on using a coding style; then use the style of the libraries you use the most.

• If you use jQuery stick to jQuery Coding Style Guidelines
• If you use Closure Library use JavaScript Google Coding Style
• If you use MooTools Library use MooTools Coding Style Guideline

Organization wise, Closure is the best.. but to me somehow it feels like I'm reading JAVA instead of javascript. Go figure.