The Badass List of Essential jQuery Plugins

That's right. here I will be maintaining a list of very useful and handy jQuery plugins so that you don't have to search for the appropriate one while working in a project. If you want to add anything new, just fork this repo and send me a pull request. Have Fun!

This list is curated by Hasin Hayder. This list is growing everyday, so don't forget to come back tomorrow again. Last Updated on April 15, 2014

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No Commercial plugins, unless it has a free version

Carousels

Owl Carousel: A fantastic carousel plugin you can use in your responsive projects

CSS3 Animations & Transitions

Transit: CSS3 Transition and Animation Library
Nanimator: jQuery Nano Animation library for content blocks
ElementTransition: Simple & beautiful transitions for web pages

Events

TouchSwipe: A jQuery plugin for touch and gesture-based interaction
Drag: A jquery special event plugin that makes the task of adding complex drag interactions, to any element.
jQuery Hotkeys: jQuery Hotkeys is a plug-in that lets you easily add and remove handlers for keyboard events anywhere in your code supporting almost any key combination.

Filtering & Sorting

Filter: A fantastic grid layout library with smart sorting :)
MixItUp: An amazing library for different types of sorting and filtering. You will love it for sure!
TableSorter: Easy and excellent table sorter plugin.
jQuery ListNav new: Excellent list filtering plugin

Form Elements - Select Box

Choosen: A jQuery Plugin by Harvest to Tame Unwieldy Select Boxes
FancySelect: A better select for discerning web developers everywhere.
Select2: Select2 is a jQuery based replacement for select boxes. It supports searching, remote data sets, and infinite scrolling of results.

Form Validation

Parsley: Javascript form validation, without actually writing a single line of javascript.

Image Processing, Canvas & SVG

BlurJS: A jQuery plugin that produces psuedo-transparent blurred elements over other elements
TiltShift: Obtain Tiltshift/Mniature effect using this cool jQuery Plugin.

Layout

Isotope: A complete layout library
Masonry: Layout library for Masonry grids
Mason: jQuery Masonry grid with a very useful feature - columns with equal height
Freewall: Amazing grid engine!
FitJS: Fit any div in any container, flawlessly.
Gridster: Gridster is a jQuery plugin that allows building intuitive draggable layouts from elements spanning multiple columns. You can even dynamically add and remove elements from the grid.

Lazy Loading

Echo.Js: Simple JavaScript image lazy loading

Media Players

jPlayer: The jQuery HTML5 Audio / Video Library

Mouse

LazyMouse: Detect Mouse Inactivity easily with this tiny jQuery Plugin.

Scrolling and Parallax

Scrollorama: The jQuery plugin for doing cool scrolly stuff
Setller.js: Parallax has bener been so easier
Arbitrary Anchor: ARBITRARY ANCHOR SCROLLING FOR ANY ELEMENT ON YOUR PAGE
ScrollTo: A simple jQuery plugin for scrolling elements, or the window itself.
Sticky Kit: Sticky-kit provides an easy way to attach elements to the page when the user scrolls such that the element is always visible.
FullPage: Create Beautiful Fullscreen Scrolling Websites

Sliders

Responsive JS: A tiny responsive slider plugin with some cool features, in 1KB only
Sequence JS: The Slider Reimagined for the Modern Web, comes with fantastic CSS3 transitions and parallux
Supersized: Fullscreen background slideshow plugin
iView: Beautiful and slick slider plugin which is responsive too
Orbit: Another beautiful slider plugin from Zurb
Superslider: A fullscreen, hardware accelerated slider for jQuery
SliderJS: SlidesJS is a responsive slideshow plug-in for jQuery (1.7.1+) with features like touch and CSS3 transitions.
GlideJS: Responsive, lightweight and touch friendly slider that works in every device

Sound & Audio

Ion.Sound: Nifty jQuery library to play sound on events

Typography

CircleType.js: Circletype.js is a tiny (2.7kb) jQuery plugin that lets you set type on a circle and allows to use any font
FitText: Fittext makes any text to fit in the container of any size
FlowType: Web typography at its finest: font-size and line-height based on element width.

UI Elements - Calendar

CLNDR: A jQuery Calendar Plugin

UI Elements - Images, Galleries & Photos

TwentyTwenty - Before & After Differences: TwentyTwenty is a image difference tool which shows you the difference between two images visually
Adipoli: Adipoli is a simple jQuery plugin used to bring stylish image hover effects
BackStretch: a simple jQuery plugin that allows you to add a dynamically-resized, slideshow-capable background image to any page or element
Taggd: Taggd is a jQuery plugin that help you create tags on images with, or without a popup!
jGallery: Beautiful jQuery photo gallery with albums and preloader
Pongstagr.am: A jQuery plugin that lets you display your Instagram media to your website using Bootstrap Front-end styles and modal-plugin.
ImgAreaSelect: ImgAreaSelect is a jQuery plugin for selecting a rectangular area of an image. It allows web developers to easily implement image cropping functionality, as well as other user interface features, such as photo notes.
Interactive BG new: Create an interactive moving background/object that reacts to viewer's cursor
LightGallery new: JQuery lightGallery is a lightweight jQuery lightbox gallery for displaying image and video in a gallery

UI Elements - Lightboxes & Modals

Magnific Popup: Magnific Popup is a responsive jQuery lightbox plugin that is focused on performance and providing best experience for user with any device
FlipLightBox: Responsive Lightbox jQuery Plugin
PrettyPhoto: PrettyPhoto is a jQuery lightbox clone. Not only does it support images, it also support for videos, flash, YouTube, iframes and ajax. It’s a full blown media lightbox.
Remodal new: Flat, responsive, lightweight, easy customizable modal window plugin with declarative state notation and hash tracking.

UI Elements - Others

JoyRide - Feature Tour Plugin: As said, it's a beautiful feature tour plugin by Zurb.
Hubspot Messaging Library: To show transactional messages in your app
Bootrtrap Progressbar new: Animated progressbar that is compatible with bootstrap 3x
Prezento new: Show off your responsive web designs. Include the plugin, apply the settings and you're ready to impress your visitors!
FixTop new: A jQuery plugin to fix DOM element to the top when a page scrolls to its position
jQuery FormChimp new: MailChimp ajax plugin for jQuery

UI Elements - Responsive Menu

FlexiNav: A Device-Agnostic Approach to Complex Site Navigation.
SlimMenu: Another multilevel responsive menu
SlideBars: Slidebars is a jQuery plugin for quickly and easily implementing mobile app-style revealing menus and sidebars into your website.
MMenu new: A jQuery plugin for creating slick, app look-alike sliding menus for you mobile website with only one line of javascript

UI Elements - Scrollers

NanoScroller.js: nanoScroller.js is a jQuery plugin that offers a simplistic way of implementing Mac OS X Lion-styled scrollbars for your website.
NiceScroll: Nicescroll is a jquery plugin, for nice scrollbars with a very similar ios/mobile style.

UI Elements - Social Sharing

jQuery Tweetable: A simple li'l plugin that lets you make site content easily tweetable.
Share-Button: fast, beautiful, and painless social shares
Slide Social Button new: Slide Social Buttons are a fun way to display your social media buttons.

UI Elements - Tables

TableCloth.js: Tablecloth.js is a jQuery plugin that helps you easily style HTML tables along with some simple customizations.
EditTable new: Adds editing capability in your table elements

UI Elements - Toolbar

Toolbar.js: A jQuery plugin that creates tooltip style toolbars

UI Elements - Tabs

Tabulous.js: A fantastic jQuery plugin to help you create tabs, easily
NanoTabs: That's right - beautiful tabs in a nano sized plugin.

UI Elements - WYSIWYG

SirTrevor: A beautiful rich content editor reimagined for web.