Chapter 1. Introducing jQuery UI

Welcome to jQuery UI 1.10: The User Interface Library for jQuery. This resource aims to take you from your first steps to an advanced usage of the JavaScript library of UI widgets and interaction helpers that are 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. Both jQuery Core and UI are built according to strict coding conventions, which are updated regularly, and follow the current best practice for JavaScript design. As the official UI library for jQuery, it's this strict adherence to current JavaScript standards that helps to make it one of the better UI libraries available for jQuery.

In this chapter we will cover the following topics:

• How to obtain a copy of the library

• How to set up a development environment

• The structure of the library

• ThemeRoller

• Browser support

• How the library is licensed

• The format of the API

jQuery has quickly become one of the most popular JavaScript libraries in use today, thanks to its ever-growing range of common UI widgets, high level of configurability, and its exceptional ease of implementation. The library is used and supported by some very well-known names, such as Microsoft, WordPress, Adobe, and Intel.

jQuery UI runs on top of jQuery, so the syntax used to initialize, configure, and manipulate the different components is in the same comfortable and easy-to-use style as jQuery. As jQuery forms the basis for UI, we can also take advantage of all the great jQuery functionality 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, or choose from a growing library of pre-existing themes. We will be taking a look at the ThemeRoller application later in this chapter.

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 the configuration and use of each widget within the jQuery UI library. By the time we create a custom component, we'll already have a basic working knowledge of the components when we add a new widget or interaction helper, 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 to master the particular component we wish to use.