Book Image

Building UIs with Wijmo

By : Yuguang Zhang
Book Image

Building UIs with Wijmo

By: Yuguang Zhang

Overview of this book

Until recently, writing applications using JavaScript and HTML was difficult, because developers had to make the user interface by themselves; however, this started changing with the introduction of JavaScript libraries such as jQuery, jQuery UI, and KnockoutJS. An extension of jQuery UI, Wijmo adds features and widgets on top of jQuery UI and makes it easier to add user interface widgets to HTML documents. Building UIs with Wijmo gives you a tour of what Wijmo offers at a glance. With code recipes and well-explained examples, you will be able to use Wijmo in no time. The book gives details on options not explained in the documentation and helps you avoid those that don't work. The examples only feature the necessary code, with recommendations and best practices. This book introduces Wijmo, grouping widgets by their common application area or usage. It walks the user through the features of the dialog widget with examples as an introduction to the library. Then, widgets for forms, images, tootips, and other topics are explored. Features only available in the Wijmo dialog widget compared to the jQuery UI widget are thoroughly explained with examples. Common form components such as checkboxes, dropdowns, and inputs have Wijmo counterparts which keep the theme consistent and add functionalities. When Wijmo is used with Knockout, the UI automatically refreshes when the data changes. This book takes it further with WebSockets for two way communication between the server and client. With Building UIs with Wijmo, you will learn all the common web development components in Wijmo. You will get started using Wijmo in no time.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Extending Wijmo Open


Wijmo Open is a set of open source jQuery UI widgets. Wijmo widgets such as the slider, dialog, or accordion are extensions to jQuery UI's widgets. Others, such as Wijmo's menu or dropdown, are new widgets.

Modifying the Dialog widget

In Chapter 2, The Dialog Widget, I showed you how to add custom buttons to the dialog widget without changing the internals. The API is unwieldy, in that you must override the icons and behavior for a default button. Now, I will show you how to add a custom button by extending the API. First, open jquery.wijmo-open.all.js and rename it as jquery.wijmo-open.all.extended.js.

When you open jquery.wijmo-open.all.extended.js in an editor, use code folding to collapse all the code and search for wijdialog. You will get a view that looks like the following screenshot after expanding on the line with varWijDialog:

All of the Wijmo Open widgets start with "use strict". This turns on strict semantics for ECMAScript 5 and allows code to run faster on...