John Resig, the creator of jQuery has been going non stop. jQuery 1.2 was released on 10 September to much fanfare by those who follow it, followed by an update to 1.2.1 for bugs and a missing feature. They didn’t stop there though. Immediately afterwards, jQuery UI was released. jQuery UI is a package of user interface widgets that can be combined to create a powerful user interface for the web.
The list of themeable widgets include:
- Accordian
- Calendar
- Dialog
- Magnifier
- Shadows
- Slider
- Sortable Tables
- …and Tabs
As well as mouse interactions such as:
- Draggables
- Droppables
- Sortables
- …and resizables
Just as I was thinking that the jQuery UI page could use some work, a post came up in my RSS reader from Glen Lipka. He opined that the demo page made it hard to see what was going on in the background with the UI framework. Like him, I’m sure many of us came to learn HTML/JS/CSS from a quick ‘view source’ of the page. In time, I’m sure they will get around to fleshing out the documentation and examples
As a regular user of jQuery, I can’t imagine writing plain ole javascript anymore. In fact, when it came time to take a look at something I wrote a few years ago in POJ, I could barely follow it. jQuery helps me write less code faster that is easier to read in the future. A good example how jQuery can reduce your code came by accident today on Ajaxian. Jon Davis wrote a script that would pull static content into a div. Think server side includes (SSI), but client side instead. This 300+ line script could have easily have been written in jQuery in just 3 lines, as demonstrated by a member of the jQuery team, Yehuda Katz:
$(”textarea[src], div[src], span[src]”).each(function() {
$(this).load(this.src);
});
A overly simple example perhaps, but important none the less. Don’t forget to get the latest jQuery info from their website, blog, or discussion groups. As this framework evolves, so to may the way you write javascript.