Welcome to jQuery UI Themes: Beginner's Guide. This introductory text will get you started with developing your own themes for jQuery UI applications. Starting with the general concepts of user interface themes, this book walks the reader through everything from the most basic ideas in jQuery UI to more advanced topics such as icons and themes for custom widgets.
Chapter 1, Themeable User Interfaces, talks about themes in general and why they're important for user interfaces. We'll also address some introductory jQuery UI theme concepts.
Chapter 2, Using Themes, explains how to apply jQuery UI themes by example. Here, we'll walk through some introductory examples that use jQuery UI themes.
Chapter 3, Using the ThemeRoller, introduces the ThemeRoller application. This chapter walks the reader through all available ThemeRoller settings and shows how to download and use your theme.
Chapter 4, Working with Widget Containers, explains how to theme widget containers. Containers are the basic building block for themes and this chapter explains a little theory and gives plenty of examples.
Chapter 5, Transforming Interaction States, talks about the different states jQuery UI widgets go through. These states have different visual appearances and you'll find numerous examples on how to customize them.
Chapter 6, Customizing Interaction Cues, gives examples of using interaction cues with jQuery UI. There is a little theory on what they are, as well as examples on how to theme them.
Chapter 7, Creating Theme Icons, talks about icon sets in jQuery UI themes. We cover how these icons are stored in the image files and how to add your own icons to a theme.
Chapter 8, Special Effects, talks about special effects in the jQuery UI theme framework – rounded corners, and shadows. You'll see several examples of how to apply these classes to widgets and how to customize them.
Chapter 9, Theming Custom Widgets, walks you through the process of constructing a custom widget. We then cover making the widget theme-ready.
All you need to run the examples in this book are the following:
An Internet connection (for downloading jQuery UI)
A web browser
A text editor
GIMP image editor (free) or PhotoShop (this is required only for chapter 7)
In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently.
To give clear instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:
Action 1
Action 2
Action 3
Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are followed with:
This heading explains the working of tasks or instructions that you have just completed.
You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:
These are short multiple choice questions intended to help you test your own understanding.
These set practical challenges and give you ideas for experimenting with what you have learned.
You will also find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "In index.html and index.js, we create three jQuery UI button widgets to show off our new icon."
A block of code is set as follows:
$(document).ready(function(){
$("#my_button").button();
});When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
#todo-title {
color: #222222;
padding-left: 5%;
}
#todo-list {
font-size: 0.8em;
color: #362b36;
list-style-type: square;
}
h3, ul {
font-family: Lucida Grande, Lucida Sans, Arial, sans-serif;
}New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "If the Layers dialog isn't open already, open it by selecting Windows | Dockable Dialogs | Layers as illustrated ".
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