jQuery UI 1.8: The User Interface Library for jQuery (Community Experience Distilled)

Build highly interactive web applications with ready-to-use widgets from the jQuery User Interface library

• Packed with examples and clear explanations of how to easily design elegant and powerful front-end interfaces for your web applications
• A section covering the widget factory including an in-depth example on how to build a custom jQuery UI widget
• Updated code with significant changes and fixes to the previous edition

In Detail

jQuery UI, the official suite of plugins for the jQuery JavaScript library, gives you a solid platform on which to build rich and engaging interfaces with maximum compatibility, stability, and a minimum of time and effort.

jQuery UI has a series of ready-made user interface widgets and a comprehensive set of core interaction helpers to reduce the amount of code that you need to write to take a project from conception to completion.

jQuery UI 1.8: The User Interface Library for jQuery has been specially revised for version 1.8 of jQuery UI. It is written to maximize your experience with the library by breaking down each component and walking you through examples that progressively build upon your knowledge, taking you from beginner to advanced usage in a series of easy-to-follow steps.

Throughout the book, you'll learn how each component can be initialized in a basic default implementation and then customize and configure each component to tailor it to your application. You'll look at the configuration options and the methods exposed by each component's API to see how these can be used to bring out the best of the library. Each chapter will also show you the custom events fired by the component covered and how these events can be intercepted and acted upon.

What you will learn from this book

• How the CSS framework consistently themes the widgets and how these styles can be used in your own code
• Create a custom jQuery UI widget using the widget library
• The underlying mark-up required by different components, and how each widget or interaction helper is initialized
• Configure the different components, and the different options that each component uses
• Work with each widget programmatically using its methods and event hooks
• Practical examples of how each component can be used
• Add flair to your interface with animation effects

Approach

An example-based approach leads you step-by-step through the implementation and customization of each library component and its associated resources. Reference tables of each configuration option, method, and event for each component are provided, alongside detailed explanations of how each widget is used.

Who this book is written for

This book is for front-end designers and developers who need to quickly learn how to use jQuery UI. To get the most out of this book you should have a good working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and should ideally be comfortable using jQuery.