[euroclydon]

As someone who does JavaScript and HTML5 UIs for a living, I'm interested to understand more about the market of customers who pay for UI components or libraries.

Can anyone comment point me to an successful MVP in this area or tell me about customers who buy this stuff?

[TomOfTTB]

Here's my explanation from experience...

99% of writing code is basic stuff that anyone out of school can do.

(Yes I made 99% up out of thin air but in my experience it's reasonably accurate)

In the world there are a lot of programmers that can do 99% of the work fine but who freeze at a problem. This isn't meant as a criticism. These people are good workers, good citizens, and so on. But in my experience they are the type of people who got a CS degree because they heard "it was the future" and are happy with a 9 to 5 job where they don't have to think about technology or code past 5:01 PM

When you supervise coding in a corporate environment you generally have 1 or 2 stars and then a bunch of other guys who fit the above description. You don't want your stars constantly being distracted by the others when they hit a problem so you seek out tools with support contracts. Then when someone hits a problem they file a support request and move on to something else until they get a response.

When support solves the problem those guys go back to coding the 99% of the stuff that they can do and everyone's happy for a fraction of the price.

$399 a year is cheap when it allows you to hire programmers who are competent but not stars (and who are accordingly cheaper)

[allenp]

The place I've seen these libraries heavily used is for internal business web apps. Think in terms of replacing MS Access within an organization with web apps. Developers want a consistent platform to use and management wants to be able to guarantee support by throwing money at some business to keep the lights on for many years. Using a paid product is less risky for these groups.

Sorry I don't have an MVP to point to.

[spanktheuser]

Fortune 500 and mid-market companies are the target market. I've consulted at several in the Chicago area that strongly prefer to work with a vendor who can provide long-term support and training.

No MVPs to offer, but Sencha and Highcharts are making a living licensing their Javascript libraries. If you're interested in this market, I'd recommend libraries for building complex infographics. Something beyond the standard business charts you see everywhere.

[teyc]

Any examples? Doesn't have to be HTML.

[spanktheuser]

Probably missed the chance to get you useful information. But I've worked for a few companies looking to create dynamic versions of the typical "tower of infographic" visualizations. If you notice this and need some examples / general requirements to get you going, my e-mail address is on my profile.

[dailo10]

I consider myself a potential customer - I'm a developer who can do the whole stack, including front-end JS/CSS/HTML, but I don't have strong design aesthetics. In other words, I'm not a designer. Therefore, being able to leverage some slick UI components is nice! To me, this is similar to purchasing a theme from theme forest.

[jonknee]

Generally the same people who buy Windows Server, businesses and governments. ExtJS is reasonably popular, probably the best example I can think of here (but I'm not in the market).

http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs/

Having quality support available is probably alone worth several times the price.

[bigohms]

Several of our clients, big consulting firms for the gov heavily use these and have no qualms about picking them up.

[wavephorm]

My untested opinion is quality JavaScript libraries are something everyone needs, but few are willing to pay for because Open Source has taught the majority of web developers to demand everything be free all the time, and include free support, otherwise they won't touch it.