Lesson 21
jQuery Plugins
In the lessons covered so far in this section, you have learned most of what you need to know to start writing dynamic web applications. This lesson will cover one final subject that can enhance dynamic web applications: jQuery plugins.
One of the reasons jQuery is so popular is that it is very easy to extend with plugins. As a result, a huge number of jQuery plugins are freely available, and these can often be used as an alternative to writing your own code.
In this lesson, you will briefly look at one of the most popular jQuery plugins, called jQuery UI. This plugin provides a set of user interface components, such as date pickers and dialog boxes, and is used extensively, including on some of the Internet's most popular websites.
It is also possible to write your own jQuery plugins. A typical jQuery plugin uses a jQuery selector to identify a set of elements, and then performs an operation on these elements, returning the modified elements as a result.
Although it is obviously possible to modify elements without encapsulating the code in a jQuery plugin, writing plugins provides a convenient mechanism for packaging code.
jQuery UI
jQuery UI is probably the most widely used jQuery plugin. This plugin provides a variety of user interface components, all of which work seamlessly across all the most common browsers. jQuery UI can therefore be used to provide polyfills for native HTML5 components, such as date pickers and progress bars.
jQuery UI can ...
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