jQuery and UIs
I have become keen on JavaScript libraries since the early days… Prototype, Rico, Scriptaculous, moofx, and so on. They’re very powerful and useful for all sorts of things. I don’t go into the purpose or utility of JavaScript libraries here — I’ll leave that debate to others. What I am going to talk about is how useful jQuery, my library of choice (yes, I’m a John Resig fanboy), is. In specific, user interface design.
To get started, let me just throw out a quick example. It’s rough and I put a lot more in it than I would ever actually use in a web design, plus it’s images-free (no graphics). Still, it’s pretty sleek and requires (this is a big part) no additional plugins. In other words, you can build things like this using jQuery right out of the box.
So you’ve seen the example, and you were blown away. I’m not going to cater to the “JavaScript newbie” here. As others will agree, if you don’t know JavaScript to begin with, you shouldn’t be using libraries or frameworks for it (or even writing the code at all, unless you intend on learning it correctly). In fact, I’m not even going to dissect my code because the comments should allow you to follow along (if you can’t already tell what’s going on because of how simple jQuery is). Really, I just wanted to bring to light the utility of jQuery and how it can be used. I thought this little script I wrote deserved more attention, particularly because I may be using it (in a modified way) in the future…
Oh yes, the future. My new company, Webtronic Media (which is still in progress and has not been officially launched), will be using the jQuery library for visual (and other functional) aspects of our site. Our intention is to produce sleek, Flash-esque visuals on top of XHTML 1.1 strict standard front-end code, but without the huge Flash player plugin (or processing!). We’re on the bleeding edge, and we want our web site’s presentation to reflect our passion for the balances of beauty and function, compatibility and efficiency. All I have to say is that you will all be blown away when Webtronic Media launches.