Should I be using JQueryUI in my project?
I have been playing around with JQueryUI for my last project. I came across some questions and questions and I was not able to solve them either on my own or with SO.
Here's my current impression:
- Laying out the UI seems pretty daunting .. lots of "boxes" to figure out before being able to do things.
- doesn't help much either on googling or asking questions about SO .. it doesn't seem like there is a huge community for support.
What is your opinion? Should I "put up with this" (I admit that this may be more of my problem than a JQueryUI problem), or should I be looking for alternatives?
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I would look at it, but keep in mind that if you have what seems like an insurmountable problem with a specific control, there is usually an alternative version available in one of the many blog posts that have sprung up in jQuery.
By sticking to the framework, you will learn how to extend it, allowing you to inject new functionality (for example, I recently wrote an internationalization component in JQuery that allows me to fetch resource strings from a web method via ASP.NET AJAX calls).
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I must admit there are some caveats about jQuery UI. It basically boils down to this: It smells funny.
Now I have a lot of respect for JQuery. It's fast, lightweight, and solves a whole bunch of browser compatibility issues. It is also extensible through plugins that you can use or not on your own.
jQuery UI is a different beast. The whole topic is really heavyweight. What I mean by this is that, for example, if you just want to pick a date, you need a theme for that, and that's a lot of CSS and a lot of configuration for the datepicker only. Compare that to the datepicker plugin where you use it (or not).
The whole premise of the heavyweight theme is that it looks built for a huge UI with a dizzying widget gallery ... but no dizzying widget gallery. There's just a handful. So why complex theme configuration?
For me it just seems from above. If I were you I would grab widgets for the things you need and maybe look at something like jQuery tools that seem less confusing.
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In my opinion jQueryUI is a mature and robust framework. There is definitely an active community supporting it, and a lot of information is available on blogs and discussion forums.
Have a look at ThemeRoller . It is a great tool to easily create themes for jQueryUI. This will help you start playing with it.
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Why not? I only use a few of these, and I feel happy (ie, the "highlight" effect).
Just remember to link to it via the Google Api . As long as you do this, it is likely that you are not slowing down anything (at least not much) and almost nothing to lose.
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Have you consulted the jQuery-UI discussion group ? Maybe you can get more help there. If not, and if you choose to use jQuery-UI, then commercial support will also be available ( see here ).
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I found jQuery user-friendly for when I need to quickly knock something together i.e. for prototyping, but like you, I also found support that is somewhat lacking, and as mentioned above, the subject matter is poor.
On a recent project looking for an alternative, I used a couple of widgets from YUI and I must say I am very impressed with the whole architecture and methodology. For example, their autocomplete abstracts the data source and provides sophisticated methods for fine-tuning the result set.
Finally, if I have time, I'm a big fan of rolling my own widgets. Re-inventing the wheel can be a great way to expand your knowledge, and you never know, you might come across a better solution :-)
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