It’s a very cool feature to have a form field that has prompt text such as Enter search keywords… right inside the input box, itself. It looks good, it makes sense to users, and it can save a lot of real estate in your design by negating the need for field labels. The problem, however, is that there are about one hundred ways to implement prompt text, and ninety-nine of them are wrong. Let’s look at this thing from all angles and come up with a fantastically simple and reliable way to make this work. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘jQuery’
Input Prompt Text: A Better Way
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010The Perfect jQuery AJAX Request
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010If you’re into client-scripting, then jQuery AJAX is probably your thing (if it’s not, perhaps it should be!). jQuery has some fantastic support for AJAX, and implementing it into your web application is so easy it’s stupid. The AJAX functionality in the AJAX library is so flexible, sometimes it’s easy to get lost when you’re trying to do something very simple. I’ve come up with a very basic jQuery AJAX template that I use for just about everything I do, and I thought it might be useful to share. (more…)
Create a Lightbox with jQuery and CSS
Monday, March 15th, 2010The “lightbox” is a unique and useful design tool when used properly. It allows designers to present information that is totally independent from the site theme, and it is especially useful when displaying information that is loaded via AJAX requests (often negating the need for additional post-backs on your pages). There are countless ways to implement lightbox functionality into your site, and almost every option I’ve ever seen is weighed down by extraneous functionality or useless transition animations. It’s quite easy to create your own lightboxes with minimal effort. This tutorial can serve as a quick and easy template to get you started. (more…)
IE Corner Inserts via jQuery
Thursday, January 28th, 2010I recently had a client whose design demanded rounded corners in a lot of different areas of their site. As I looked through the design documentation, the variety and color of these rounded widgets really started to add up. I quickly decided that pure CSS corners were the best choice for their design. Most users can utilize border-radius to apply the rounded effect without any overhead (the browser does the work), and the remaining users can be handled by a quick and easy bit of jQuery. (more…)
A Simple jQuery Tabs Template
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009I love jQuery; I use it all the time. I also love the great UI controls that come with the jQuery UI library. Unfortunately, I’ve found that a lot of these controls can be a little heavy in terms of required JS/CSS files that your clients will have to download in order to use these controls. Being the minimalist that I am, I really want to drop a small amount of CSS and HTML into my site and quickly get myself up and running with a tab structure that’s both flexible and accessible. (more…)