jQuery UI has some nice convenient CSS styles for alerting and highlighting. I can see it at the themeroller site -- look on the right hand side. Is there a Javascript interface to these styles? Do we use hard-coded CSS? Where is this documented?
Is there method list, a cheatsheat, or anything other than the interactive docs on jQuery UI?
They are just CSS styles. You can apply them on the backend, or apply them using .addClass().
Apply the appropriate CSS classes for the desired interaction cue from the UI/Theming/API page: .ui-state-highlight for highlight and .ui-state-error for error. You can do it statically or use .addClass('ui-state-highlight') or .addClass('ui-state-error') to do it dynamically.