Book Image

jQuery UI 1.7: The User Interface Library for jQuery

Book Image

jQuery UI 1.7: The User Interface Library for jQuery

Overview of this book

Modern web application user interface design requires rapid development and proven results. jQuery UI, a trusted suite of official plug-ins for the jQuery JavaScript library, gives you a solid platform on which to build rich and engaging interfaces with maximum compatibility and stability, and minimum time and effort. jQuery UI has a series of ready-made, great-looking user interface widgets and a comprehensive set of core interaction helpers designed to be implemented in a consistent and developer-friendly way. With all this, the amount of code that you need to write personally to take a project from conception to completion is drastically reduced. Specially revised for version 1.7 of jQuery UI, this book has been 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. In this book, you'll learn how each component can be initialized in a basic default implementation and then see how easy it is to customize its appearance and configure its behavior to tailor it to the requirements of 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. Events play a key role in any modern web application if it is to meet the expected minimum requirements of interactivity and responsiveness, and each chapter will show you the custom events fired by the component covered and how these events can be intercepted and acted upon.

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jQuery UI 1.7: The User Interface Library for jQuery
Nov, 2009 | 392 pages
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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
jQuery UI 1.7
jQuery UI 1.7
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introducing jQuery UI
Introducing jQuery UI
Downloading the library
Setting up a development environment
The structure of the library
ThemeRoller
Component categories
Browser support
Book examples
Library licensing
API introduction
Summary
2
The CSS Framework
The CSS Framework
The files that make up the framework
Using the framework classes
Switching themes quickly and easily
Overriding the theme
Summary
3
Tabs
Tabs
A basic tab implementation
Tab CSS framework classes
Applying a custom theme to the tabs
Configurable options
Selecting a tab
Tab events
Using tab methods
AJAX tabs
Displaying data obtained via JSONP
Summary
4
The Accordion Widget
The Accordion Widget
Accordion's structure
Styling the accordion
Configuring an accordion
Accordion events
Accordion navigation
Accordion methods
Accordion interoperability
A del.icio.us accordion
Summary
5
The Dialog
The Dialog
A basic dialog
Dialog options
Dialog's event model
Controlling a dialog programmatically
Getting data from the dialog
Dialog interoperability
A dynamic image-based dialog
Summary
6
Slider
Slider
Implementing a slider
Custom styling
Configurable options
Using slider's event API
Slider methods
Future uses
A color slider
Summary
7
Datepicker
Datepicker
The default datepicker
Configurable options of the picker
Utility methods
Date picking methods
An AJAX datepicker
Summary
8
Progressbar
Progressbar
The default progressbar implementation
Using progressbar's configuration option
Progressbar's event API
Progressbar methods
User initiated progress
Rich uploads with progressbar
Summary
9
Drag and Drop
Drag and Drop
The deal with drag and droppables
Draggables
Configuring draggable options
Draggable event callbacks
Using draggable's methods
Droppables
Configuring droppables
Droppable event callbacks
Droppable methods
A drag and drop game
Summary
10
Resizing
Resizing
A basic resizable
Resizable options
Resizable callbacks
Resizable methods
Resizable tabs
Summary
11
Selecting
Selecting
Basic implementation
Selectee class names
Configurable options of the selectable component
Selectable callbacks
Selectable methods
A selectable image viewer
Summary
12
Sorting
Sorting
The default implementation
Configuring sortable options
Reacting to sortable events
Connected callbacks
Sortable methods
Widget compatibility
Sortable page widgets
Summary
13
UI Effects
UI Effects
The core effects file
Highlighting specified elements
Bouncing
Shaking an element
Transferring an element's outline
Element scaling
Element explosion
The puff effect
The pulsate effect
Dropping elements onto the page
Sliding elements open or closed
The window-blind effect
Clipping elements
Folding elements
Summary
Index
Index

Chapter 1. Introducing jQuery UI

Welcome to jQuery UI 1.7: The User Interface Library for jQuery. This resource aims to take you from your first steps to an advanced usage of the JavaScript library of UI widgets and interaction helpers built on top of the hugely popular and easy-to-use jQuery.

jQuery UI extends the underlying jQuery library to provide a suite of rich and interactive widgets along with code-saving interaction helpers, built to enhance the user interfaces of your websites and web applications. It's the official UI library for jQuery and although it is not the only library built on top of jQuery, in my opinion it is without a doubt the best.

jQuery has quickly become one of the most popular JavaScript libraries in use today and jQuery UI will definitely become the extension library of choice, thanks to its ever-growing range of common UI widgets, high levels of configurability, and its exceptional ease of implementation.

jQuery UI runs on top of jQuery and hence the syntax used to initialize, configure, and manipulate the different components is in the same comfortable, easy-to-use style as jQuery. We automatically get all of the great jQuery functionality at our disposal as well. The library is also supported by a range of incredibly useful tools, such as the CSS framework that provides a range of helper CSS classes, and the excellent ThemeRoller application that allows us to visually create our own custom themes for the widgets.

Over the course of this book we'll look at each of the existing components that make up the library. We will also be looking at their configuration options and trying out their methods in order to fully understand how they work and what they are capable of. By the end of the book, you'll be an expert in its implementation.

We already have a basic working knowledge of the components when we add a new component because of the consistency in how we implement the different components that make up the library. Therefore, we only need to learn any widget-specific functionality.

This chapter will cover the following topics:

  • How to obtain a copy of the library

  • How to set up a development environment

  • The structure of the library

  • ThemeRoller

  • The format of the API

  • Browser support

  • How the library is licensed

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