Should I use JQueryUI in my project?

Question

I've been playing around with JQueryUI for my latest project. I've run into some issues and questions, and I've not been able to solve them either myself or with the help of SO.

Here's my current impression:

• Styling the UI seems quite daunting .. a lot of "framework" to understand before being able to do stuff
• not much help either by googling or by asking questions on SO .. doesn't look like there is a huge community to support it

What is your opinion? Should I "tough it out" (I admit that this may be more my problem than a problem of JQueryUI) or should I look for alternatives?

Answer 1

And why not? I'm using only a few things from it and i feel happy (i.e. - 'highlight' effect).

Just don't forget to reference it through Google Api. As long as you do that - it's quite likely that you do not slow anything down (at least - not much) and lose practically nothing.

Answer 2

Did you consult the jQuery-UI discussion group? Maybe you can get more help there. If not, and if you decide to use jQuery-UI, then there's also commercial support (see here).

Answer 3

I don't think it is all that useful. It used to include autocomplete, which i thought was the most useful feature, but then they suddenly dropped it. It is a huge download if you include everything.

Answer 4

In my opinion jQueryUI is a mature and reliable framework. There is definitely an active community supporting it and plenty of information is available on blog spots and discussion forums.

Have a look at ThemeRoller. This is an excellent tool for easily creating themes for jQueryUI. It will help you when starting playing around with it.

Answer 5

I would perservere with it, but bear in mind that if you have what seems to be an insurmountable problem with a particular control there's generally an alternate version available in one of the many blog posts that have sprung up about JQuery.

By sticking with the framework, you'll learn how to extend it yourself, which will allow you to introduce new functionality (for instance, I recently wrote an internationalisation component in JQuery that allows me to retrieve resource strings from a web method via AJAX calls in ASP.NET).

Answer 6

I have to admit to having some reservations about jQuery UI. Basically it comes down to this: it smells funny.

Now I have enormous respect for jQuery proper. It's fast, lightweight and it solves a whole heap of browser compatibility issues. It's also extensible via plugins that you can use or not at your discretion.

jQuery UI is a different beast. The whole theme thing is really heavyweight. What I mean by that s that, for example, if you just want a date picker, you need a theme for that and thats a lot of CSS and a lot of configuration just for a datepicker. Compare that to a datepicker plugin where you just use it (or not).

The whole premise of the heavyweight theme thing is that it looks built to a huge UI framework with a dizzying gallery of widgets... but there isn't a dizzying gallery of widgets. There's just a handful. So why the complex theme configuration?

To me it just seems over the top. If I were you I'd pick up widgets for things you need and possibly look at something like jQuery Tools, which seems to be less convoluted.

Answer 7

I've found jQuery UI quiet handy when I need to whack something together quickly, i.e. for prototyping, but like you I've also found support somewhat lacking and as mentioned above the theming leaves something to be desired.

On a recent project, looking for an alternative, I've used a couple of widgets from YUI and I have to say I'm very impressed with the whole architecture and methodology behind it. For example their autocomplete abstracts away the data source and provides overridable methods to fine tune the results set.

Finally, if I have time, I'm a big fan of rolling my own widgets. Re-inventing the wheel can be a great way to expand your knowledge and you never know, you may happen across a better solution :-)