jQuery in Action
The end?
317
and limber, providing only those core features required by most web application
authors and leaving the rest to plugins that could be included as needed. That
strategy has served jQuery well as the community of its users has created and pub-
lished a vast array of plugins that any user of jQuery can download and employ.
authors and leaving the rest to plugins that could be included as needed. That
strategy has served jQuery well as the community of its users has created and pub-
lished a vast array of plugins that any user of jQuery can download and employ.
Taking a survey of some of the more often-used plugins, we saw a wide range
of functionality that enhances the core jQuery feature set.
The Form Plugin provides wrapped methods that allow us to deal with form
elements in a controlled fashion, even allowing us to instrument forms for easy
submission through Ajax requests rather than the traditional full-page refresh.
submission through Ajax requests rather than the traditional full-page refresh.
Getting accurate (or even quick-and-dirty estimates) of the position and
dimensions of
DOM
elements is provided by the Dimensions Plugin, which is
essential when trying to accurately place elements on the page in relation to one
another or to the page origin.
another or to the page origin.
Another plugin that's indispensable is the Live Query Plugin, which allows us
to register event handlers for elements that don't even exist yet. This seemingly
non-causal ability is an enormous advantage for pages in which we expect
non-causal ability is an enormous advantage for pages in which we expect
DOM
elements to be frequently created and destroyed over the lifetime of the page.
The
UI
Plugin, which we unfortunately weren't able to fully explore, provides
such essential user interface capabilities as drag-and-drop, sorting, and a handful
of useful user interface widgets.
of useful user interface widgets.
And that's just the beginning. Drop in on http://jquery.com/plugins for a list of
other available plugins. More and more get added all the time!
9.6 The end?
Hardly!
Even though we've presented the entire jQuery
API
within the confines of
this book, it would have been impossible to show you all the many ways that this
broad
broad
API
can be used on your pages. The examples that we presented were cho-
sen specifically to lead you down the path of discovering how you can use jQuery
to solve the problems that you encounter on a day-to-day basis on your web
application pages.
to solve the problems that you encounter on a day-to-day basis on your web
application pages.
jQuery is a living project. Heck, it was quite a chore for your authors to keep
up with the rapid developments in the library over the course of writing this
book. The core library is constantly evolving into a more useful resource, and
more and more plugins are appearing on practically a daily basis.
book. The core library is constantly evolving into a more useful resource, and
more and more plugins are appearing on practically a daily basis.
We urge you to keep track of the development in the jQuery community and
sincerely hope that this book has been a great help in starting you on writing