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.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
jQuery UI 1.7
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

The core effects file


Like the individual components themselves, the effects require the services of a separate core file. It provides essential functionality to the effects, such as creating wrapper elements and controlling the animations. Most, but not all, of the effects have their own source files, which build on the core foundation to add functionality specific to the effect.

All we need to do to use an effect is include the core file (effects.core.js) in the page before the effect's source file. Unlike the ui.core.js file however, the effects.core.js file has been designed to be used, in part, completely standalone.

When using the core effect file on its own we can take advantage of color animations. This includes changing the background color of an element into another color (and not just a snap change but a smooth morphing of one color into another), class transitions, and advanced easing animations.

Using color animations

Let's look at creating color animations. First; create the following...