Phew! This was quite a chapter. We learned about jQuery plugins, how to use them, and how to use the options they make available to customize them. We learned about dependencies and inserting multiple scripts into our file in the correct order. We used Kelvin Luck's excellent jScrollPane plugin to replace our boring operating system scrollbars with fancy custom ones of our own design. And the bonus is, they work just like browser scrollbars – our site visitors can click on the track, on the up and down buttons, they can drag the handle, or they can use their mousewheel to navigate up and down the scrollable areas we've set up. It's a win for both aesthetics and usability.
Finally, we learned how to smoothly scroll to an anchor inside the scrollable area – this allows our site visitors to easily get to individual bits of content inside the scrollable area, and communicates what's happening clearly.
Next up, we'll take a look at overriding the browser's default tooltips with nicely designed...