aims to take you from your first steps to an advanced usage of the JavaScript library
of UI widgets and interaction helpers built on top of the hugely popular and
easy-to-use jQuery.
jQuery UI extends the underlying jQuery library to provide a suite of rich and
interactive widgets along with code-saving interaction helpers, built to enhance the
user interfaces of your websites and web applications. It's the official UI library for
jQuery and although it is not the only library built on top of jQuery, in my opinion it
is without a doubt the best.
jQuery has quickly become one of the most popular JavaScript libraries in use today
and jQuery UI will definitely become the extension library of choice, thanks to its
ever-growing range of common UI widgets, high levels of configurability, and its
exceptional ease of implementation.
jQuery UI runs on top of jQuery and hence the syntax used to initialize, configure,
and manipulate the different components is in the same comfortable, easy-to-use
style as jQuery. We automatically get all of the great jQuery functionality at our
disposal as well. The library is also supported by a range of incredibly useful tools,
such as the CSS framework that provides a range of helper CSS classes, and the
excellent ThemeRoller application that allows us to visually create our own custom
themes for the widgets.
Over the course of this book we'll look at each of the existing components that make
up the library. We will also be looking at their configuration options and trying out
their methods in order to fully understand how they work and what they are capable
of. By the end of the book, you'll be an expert in its implementation.
We already have a basic working knowledge of the components when we add a
new component because of the consistency in how we implement the different
components that make up the library. Therefore, we only need to learn any
widget-specific functionality.
