A Guide to Enhance Your Sites by Using These Awesome JavaScript APIs

Enhance your sites by making the most of these best JavaScript APIs.

A guide to getting started using them. These will help you add new and interesting functionality to your sites and apps. A word of warning: many of these APIs are still in development, so make sure you check browser support before you start using them, and provide fallbacks where necessary.

1. Modify browser settings

While the browser usually is 'above' any code running in it, a Mozilla-derived API allows JavaScript limited access to browser settings. Think about aspects such as reading the user's homepage, how bookmarks are handled, and where new tabs show up.

2. Open Government APIs

The concept of open government means that the results of these works are made available via (usually open) APIs, allowing third-party developers to perform all kinds of data harvesting magic.

One especially interesting area concerns transportation: public transport services tend to provide APIs with live locations of their vehicles and the frequencies seen on the route network.

3. HERE mapping API

Competition, by definition, is good. Here is Nokia's former mapping division, and offers developers a "third party" alternative to the mapping services by the big three. One interesting aspect is the extremely simple API, which makes downloading tiles a breeze.

4. Master of linguistics

Programs dealing with user-generated content can score brownie points by offering an integrated translation service. A client for Twitter or Gab could, for example, translate English texts to Russian to make them easier to handle for that audience.

5. NASA

Microsoft's decision to provide Windows Phone 7 users with an occasional curated wallpaper drove ripples through the industry. Given that pictures of Space are always popular, why not go right to the source and grab yourself a few from the never-ending store of NASA?

6. YouTube API

A YouTube channel is only as good as the analytics which stands behind it. Google's YouTube Data API might not be particularly spiffy but does provide — among other things — valuable insights into your audience's behavior.

7. Payment Request API

The first JavaScript API we're looking at is the Payment Request API. When creating an e-commerce website, lots of thought goes into improving the checkout flow to make sure the experience is as smooth and pain-free as possible. Entering payment details remains a repetitive process. If any field is slightly wrong, the whole process breaks and it needs to be started again. On the developer’s side, making sure the right validation checks are in place for each payment method is a time-consuming process.

The Payment Request API does away with this part of the checkout experience. The page can request the information it needs and the browser provides the user with the fields to enter.

8. Credential Management API

Instead of having to remember lots of individual login details, users can log in with the credentials stored within the browser. That way, users on multiple devices can have their details follow them around without needing to log in each time.

9. Writable Files API

The Writable Files API will provide developers with more flexibility and enable users to decide where files should be stored. This opens the door to more fully-featured projects on the web, such as an online code editor or complex graphics applications.

10. OffscreenCanvas

Drawing to a is an expensive task for a browser. This new API enables you to render graphics off the main thread, without hitting the DOM.