A few years ago I started as a front-end developer using stuff like jQuery UI. I learned a lot about the stack but quickly switched to back-end where I work right now.
Now I need to make an admin panel, I'm already pretty ok with things again but noticed the same problems from years ago.
How the hell we still don't have basic crossbrowser components like http://caniuse.com/#search=datetime? Am I looking at the wrong places?
Here's how it went: spent the whole day looking for good datetimepicker on GitHub (ORDER BY stars DESC). All of the top 3 components have major issues (e.g. missing localization on a few bits, problems on mobile, closed issues with no reply and no fix). Now I need a better <select> so I go with select2 (I like this one!) but the bootstrap 3 theme is not really maintained.
Why are we making new JS frameworks if it's so hard to work with the basics? There are problems still unsolved. I mean the base UI components that shouldn't go to the garbage when Angular "replaces" jQuery and when React "replaces" Angular. When bootstrap releases version 4 most of the components will move and/or stop being maintained. It's like we can make awesome specialized libraries but when you need a component that "just works" you're screwed.
I'm sure most of them works fine on the latest Chrome and I'm not asking for IE8 support but man, most of the stuff I test is somehow broken on Firefox for Linux.
How do I solve this problem? I need base components that I can trust will work fine on most modern things. Datetimepicker, something like select2, a modal that doesn't piss it self to deliver ajax (B3 modal events are not reliable and IIRC it's deprecated now), etc. Should I just go with a UX library like FuelUX? Any recommendations?
ps: Yes I'm using bootstrap 3, ES6, npm and all the shiny things. Yes I know how open-source works, I've been the maintainer of a popular (back-end) repo for years.
http://aimsely.com/