jQuery to the Next Level

The book is divided into three section; the first deals exclusively with HTML forms and looks at a series of features that can be added to forms dynamically to improve their usability and functionality. As well as looking at how standard form elements can be enhanced Dan also discusses related topics such as how objects can be used to store configuration properties, namespacing, and theming.

Section 2 starts with a look at plugin development with Dan taking you step by step through the process of writing a plugin, showing how jQuery caters for plugin development to simplify the process and how the code can be structured, and how to ensure your plugin doesn't break the current chain. The section concludes with a look at several widgets solving a variety of common techniques including passing data back to the page with JSON, consuming web-based APIs, and dealing with web authentication to allow visitors to authenticate with 3rd party services.

In the final section Dan shows how jQuery can be used to enhance user interfaces that run on Adobe Air. A complete Air application is created over this section which will give you a simple but fully working desktop application created with your existing web design knowledge. Many aspects of Air development are looked at including the different files that make up an Air app, making URL requests, handling application events, and how applications can be packaged and updated.

What this book does and who it’s for

Overall you'll get to see and use a range of different technologies that can be used alongside jQuery to enhance the user experience of your sites including PHP and cURL, Mysql, JSON, Yahoo Pipes, regular expressions, and XML. This e-book is best suited for intermediate or advanced developers that want to learn more about jQuery.

About the author

Dan Wellman is an author and web developer based in the UK. Dan has written two books so far; the first, published in 2008 shows you how to get started with the YUI and is called Learning the Yahoo User Interface Library. His last book, which looks at jQuery UI is called jQuery UI 1.7: The User Interface Library for jQuery.

Dan has been writing web development tutorials for over 5 years and works by day for a local ecommerce agency in his home town of Southampton.

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Content

Forms

Beautifying Forms with jQuery

• Part 1 - Structuring the Form
  
• Part 2 - Creating Striping
  
• Part 3 - Beautifying the text input fields
  
• Part 4 - Contextual form hints
  
• Part 5 - Replacing the Checkbox and Radio button
  
• Part 6 - Replacing the default select elements
  
• Part 7 - Creating a theming mechanism
  

Plugins

Coding a jQuery Plugin

• Part 1 - Creating our plugin object
  
• Part 2 - Adding the first method
  
• Part 3 - Getting it all to work

Creating a Poll System with jQuery

• Part 1 - Add validation to the poll
  
• Part 2 - Storing and showing the result

Adding your Tweet Stream to your Website

Capturing Pages with a Twitter Bar

• Part 1 - Creating the Toolbar
  
• Part 2 - Styling the toolbar
  

Air

jQuery and the Air Platform

• Part 1 - Creating the UI
  
• Part 2 - Getting a RSS feed
  
• Part 3 - Scripting the buttons
  
• Part 4 - Creating the update mechanism
  
• Part 5 - Packaging the application