About this Book

jQuery UI in Action’s primary purpose is to teach you how to use the jQuery UI library to build rich, user-friendly web applications. The book starts with the basics of creating and modifying widgets, and moves on to a series of complex examples, such as building widgets from scratch, optimizing your applications for production, and even building a complete flight-search application.

This book assumes that you have basic knowledge of CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery. If you’re not an expert don’t despair—when intermediate- and advanced-level concepts are brought up, they’re explained. If you’re finding yourself a bit overwhelmed, appendix A discusses resources for getting up to speed. On the flip side, if you’re an expert don’t despair either. You’ll build a number of real-world examples and discuss advanced aspects of the library throughout the book.

Roadmap

This book is organized into three parts.

Part 1 provides an introduction to jQuery UI. Chapter 1 introduces the library itself, with an explanation of what is in the library, what the library does well, and what it doesn’t do well. Chapter 2 explains the ins and outs of widgets, the core building blocks of jQuery UI.

Part 2 walks through the core components of jQuery UI, starting with its widgets. Chapter 3 introduces the five jQuery UI form widgets, uses them to build a complete form, and compares the widgets to their HTML5 counterparts. Chapter 4 discusses the three jQuery UI layout widgets and the four utility widgets. Chapter 5 introduces the five interaction widgets, and uses them to build a series of real-world interfaces, as well as a few games. Chapter 6 contains a thorough discussion of the jQuery UI effects and chapter 7 explains everything about jQuery UI themes.

Part 3 builds upon the core knowledge taught in part 2 to show a series of advanced topics. Chapter 8 shows how to build your own widgets from scratch, using the same mechanism jQuery UI uses. Chapter 9 shows how to customize the behavior of any widget using widget extensions. Chapter 10 teaches how to prepare a jQuery UI application for production usage, including applying several performance optimizations. Chapter 11 builds upon all this knowledge to explain how to build a complete flight-search application. And finally, chapter 12 looks under the hood of the library, to show the tools that jQuery UI uses to make jQuery UI work.

There are 6 appendixes. Appendix A covers the best ways to learn jQuery. How jQuery UI tests its own widgets (jQuery UI tests jQuery UI!) is the focus of appendix B. Appendix C focuses on using jQuery UI with Backbone. Appendix D is about globalization. Ways to contribute to jQuery UI are explained in appendix E, and polyfilling HTML5 with jQuery UI is touched on in appendix F.

Code conventions

jQuery UI in Action provides copious examples that show how you can make use of each of the topics covered. Source code in listings or in text appears in a fixed-width font like this to separate it from ordinary text. In addition, class and method names, object properties, and other code-related terms and content in text are presented using the same fixed-width font.

Code annotations accompany many of the listings, highlighting important concepts. In some cases, numbered cueballs link to additional explanations that follow the listing.

Getting the source code

You can access the source code for all examples in the book from the publisher’s website at www.manning.com/jQueryUIinAction. All source code for the project is also hosted at GitHub, a commercial Git hosting firm, at https://github.com/tjvantoll/jquery-ui-in-action-demos. We will maintain the current URL via the publisher’s website. The source is maintained by chapter, so, for example, you can download /source-code/ch06 and you will have a full copy of the source code up to that point in the book.

Author Online

Purchase of jQuery UI in Action includes free access to a private web forum run by Manning Publications where you can make comments about the book, ask technical questions, and receive help from the author and from other users. To access the forum and subscribe to it, point your web browser to www.manning.com/jQueryUIinAction. This page provides information on how to get on the forum once you’re registered, what kind of help is available, and the rules of conduct on the forum.

Manning’s commitment to our readers is to provide a venue where a meaningful dialog between individual readers and between readers and the author can take place. It’s not a commitment to any specific amount of participation on the part of the author, whose contribution to the AO forum remains voluntary (and unpaid). We suggest you try asking the author some challenging questions lest his interest stray!

The Author Online forum and the archives of previous discussions will be accessible from the publisher’s website as long as the book is in print.

About the author

TJ VanToll is a developer advocate for Telerik and a jQuery team member. He has over a decade of web development experience—specializing in performance and the mobile web. TJ speaks about his research and experiences at conferences around the world, and has written for publications such as Smashing Magazine, HTML5 Rocks, and MSDN Magazine.