JQuery Widgets and the Widget Challenge

Dietrich Kappe, Monday, October 30, 2006 @ 8:00 am

JQuery is rapidly becoming my favorite Javascript library. With it's ability to pack a complex operations into a single line, it sometimes feels a little bit more like Perl than Javascript.

JQuery allows for plugins, so you can build widgets and extensions on top of it that will work with one another. As of right now, there are already quite a few widgets and extensions built on top of JQuery:

• ThickBox - modal dialog widget built on top of JQuery.
• jCarousel - plugin for horizontal or vertical scrolling of items.
  
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• Interface - large collection of plugin effects for jQuery, including draggable, dropabble, etc. A must visit site. Also includes a list of plugins developed by other developers (some of which you will also find in this post).
• Date Picker - standard date picker.
• JQuery Portlets - based on the above Interface plugins, a draggable portlet interface. Very slick.
  
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• Dylan Verheul's autocomplete, editable, autohelp and google maps plugins.
• PanView - drag an image around in a little view port.
• YShout - a shoutbox (allows users to chat on your site or page).

I haven't seen a rich text editor yet, or the FishEye widget. The main jQuery site has an extensive list of plugins, including the above and more.

Feeling the pressure from Dojo, the JQuery guys have issued a challenge to the developer community to come up with new widgets based on JQuery:

Dojo released a new widget today: a spreadsheet widget. and it ocurred to me that while we don't quite have anything like that yet, there are scattered widgets throughout the jQuerysphere. I figured it'd be nice for us to put together a jQuery widget package that, to the extent possible, mirrors the Dojo widget set.

The challenge is this: where there is no existing widget, create it. The holy grail, at this point, would be a replication of their spreadsheet widget or their rich text editor widget.

I'd like to put together the widget pack at some point in the next month, and I'll be featuring the widget pack in next month's Magazine. Theere's nothing requiring an exact mirror of the Dojo widgets, so feel free to submit widgets that are not present in Dojo.

A little friendly competition is a good thing. I look forward to more JQuery based widgets being developed and Dojo following suit. While you're at it, check out the powered by JQuery button challenge. Winners get Ajax books. Cool beans. You can never have too many Ajax books.

Technorati : ajax, jquery, widgets

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Comments: 4 so far

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1. 

   Hi Dietrich! Yep, there’s a fisheye plugin as well:

   http://interface.eyecon.ro/development/demos/fisheye.html

   Enjoy.. :o)

   Comment by Rey Bango, Monday, October 30, 2006 @ 8:52 am

2. 

   Just an FYI, your “fisheye” is usually called a Tsunami menu, or a “Mac OSX dock”.

   Comment by Andy Matthews, Monday, October 30, 2006 @ 9:26 am

3. 

   hi, nice fisheye!
   how can I get it to the left or right?
   any chance?
   I have not seen a link to the fisheye on their page, so I am confused, if this is the right place to ask…

   Comment by Hinnack, Saturday, November 11, 2006 @ 11:54 am

4. 

   I recently started developing a jQuery spreadsheet plugins called jQuery.sheet. Check it out here http://jqueryplugins.weebly.com/.

   Comment by Robert, Thursday, May 29, 2008 @ 1:35 pm

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