About plainjs.com

plainjs.com answers one question per page: how to do a thing in the browser without jQuery, or without any library at all. Each page gives the code that works in current browsers, the jQuery call it replaces, the month the browsers caught up (the Baseline date from MDN), the ways the two differ, and an example you can run on the page. The second half of the site is a directory of JavaScript libraries you can load from a script tag or an import, with facts the site did not type by hand.

“Plain JavaScript” here means the browser platform without a framework or a build step. The site does not cover Node, React or TypeScript tooling, and it does not argue against jQuery. W3Techs counted jQuery on about two thirds of all websites in October 2026 (w3techs.com); for many of them it is still the right choice. The site is for people who have decided to go without it, and for people on jQuery 4 who need the utilities it removed.

Where the site came from

plainjs.com went online in May 2015 as “the vanilla JavaScript repository”: fifty pages that gave the plain JavaScript for a jQuery method, written for the browsers of that year, and a directory of 185 plugins submitted by readers. In October 2026 the site passed to its present publisher, Webhaus LLC, and is being rebuilt page by page.

Every one of the fifty addresses is kept. A page that has been rewritten carries the date it was last reviewed and the browser it was tested in. A page that has not been rewritten yet is the original 2015 page, marked as such at the top; its code ran in Internet Explorer and does not use what browsers have gained since. The rewrite replaces it at the same address.

The directory was rebuilt from the old list. Every entry whose project still exists was re-checked by script; entries whose project is gone were retired, and their old addresses lead to the category page.

How the code is tested

Every code block on a rewritten page runs in a headless Chromium browser before the page is published. A block that throws, rejects or logs an error stops the page from publishing. The foot of each page says when it was last reviewed and in which browser version it was tested. Pages are reviewed again twice a year, and the date changes when they are.

Claims about browser support are not the editors’ opinion. Each page quotes the Baseline date from the MDN page for the API it uses, with a link to that page. The editorial policy gives the full method.

How the directory is checked

A library is listed with facts fetched from GitHub, npm and jsDelivr by a script that runs monthly: size, licence, dependencies, last release, stars, and whether the package ships types. Each entry shows the date the facts were fetched. Five gates decide the “No-build verified” badge: no runtime dependencies, a file that loads in a browser as it is, no compile-only entry points, an open-source licence, and a project that is not archived or deprecated. A library that passes all but the first, with one small dependency, is “Buildless”. The one sentence of editorial text per entry is the only thing written by hand.

Who publishes it

plainjs.com is published by Webhaus LLC, 2108 N St, Ste 4030, Sacramento, CA 95816, USA. Webhaus LLC also publishes guides to other subjects and is responsible for everything on this site. The editor can be reached at [email protected].

Who writes it

plainJS editors is the editorial byline of the plainjs.com team at Webhaus LLC, not the name of one person. Pages under that byline are researched from MDN, the web specifications, caniuse and the jQuery API documentation, drafted with the help of AI research and writing tools, tested in a browser by the site’s own harness, and checked against the cited sources by a person before publication. The authority of a page comes from its sources and from the test, not from anyone’s credentials.

How the site makes money

The site shows one advertisement per page, served by Google AdSense in its non-personalized mode and never inside a code block. It has no affiliate links. Directory entries are not paid for, and a paid placement, if the site ever carries one, will be marked as such and will not change the facts shown or the gates passed. The privacy policy says what the advertising involves.