What is a good jQuery plugin (or plain JavaScript library) for skinning HTML Web forms?

Question

I'm looking for a high-quality plugin or library for creating custom cross-browser-compatible skins for HTML form controls. I want to eliminate the inconsistency of visual appearance of form controls in different browsers and operating systems.

I've done some searching, and the most useful page that I stumbled upon is:

http://www.queness.com/post/204/25-jquery-plugins-that-enhance-and-beautify-html-form-elements

However, I didn't find any plugins that look polished and stable enough (and support IE 6, which is a requirement) for my needs.

Does anything else exist out there that you can recommend? If not, would it be viable to roll my own solution? I don't need anything too terribly complex - no custom controls or special visual effects - just a consistent look in the standard form controls (s, s, etc.) in the major browsers, IE 6 and newer.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer 1

If it were me, I'd pick a plugin that did whatever validation or functionality I was after, then I would go after jQueryUI.com to make the icons and so forth that I was after.

http://jqueryui.com for fancy user interface polish. If you look at the themeroller, http://jqueryui.com/themeroller/ You can see what they have. Specifically for forms, I would look at using the icon sets there for use on your inputs and buttons and such.

For separate states, you could set up multiple icon sets, I guess. I know they're making it so jQuery ui is going to be able to have plugins of it's own, so I'm sure forms specicially will be coming soon.

But basically, I would pick a plugin for forms that you like, then replace it's default graphics with something I made over at jQuery UI so the look and feel would blend into any other stuff I was doing. Some of the other things like date picker and other widgets that have inputs intrinsically may have styles you can use as well.