Options for non-native form inputs for the web?

Question

I'm wondering if there are any good non-native form inputs for web development? I am currently using the built in <input> controls. They work just fine, but for my application they are too big (especially on OS X). I am wondering if there are any libraries that I can drop in as replacements.

I am especially interested in ones that:

• Are a close to native control behavior as possible. Support for tabbing, highlighting current textbox, pressing up/down in <select>, etc.

• Have something that replicates <select>

• Look good and are compact

I am aware that you can use CSS for some styling, but it's pretty minimal and looks different depending on the browser.

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

http://plugins.jquery.com/project/jNice http://www.whitespace-creative.com/jquery/jNice/

You may want to customize the images, sizes and CSS with your own.

Answer 2

You could try creating the controls with Flex/Flash and using JavaScript to retrieve the values.

This would allow you to customize the control as much as you wanted while still staying compatible with most users/browsers.

Answer 3

HTML is not modular like that. Importantingly, you're also restricted by the browser support. The only ways to customize the look'n'feel of HTML are CSS and Javascript. There are crossbrowser CSS/JS based UI frameworks available like jQuery UI and several CSS based form solutions with the goal to have the same look'n'feel among the (most) browsers.

You can also consider to develop an Rich Internet Application (RIA) using one of Flex, Air, JavaFX, Silverlight, etc. This way it looks exactly the same in every webbrowser, but that requires at least an additional plugin which the client may have to install first.