jQuery Plugin Mania

Shortly after getting really down with jQuery, it dawned on me that the reason that it's become so popular is that it's frekkin' easy to create your own plugins. It's so extensible, it's hard not to do it. So within the course of three weeks, I've already done two jQuery plugins: simpleFormUI and getPostForm.

simpleFormUI

I work at a digital agency, and quite often our designers decide that the standard form elements are too dull. Some may object here, that using standard, browser-style form elements enhance usability (and hence completion rate), I'm of the opinion that beautifully styled form elements can in fact enhance the experience and increase the likelyhood that a user would want to use the form.

Not all forms should look the same – just like all paper forms shouldn't look like the ones you get from the government or your insurance company. Therefore, I've set out to create a jQuery Plugin that adds the (semantic-inspired) elements you need to style your forms beautifully without disturbing the functionality of the familiar form elements. I'm also still in the process of making these new elements as accessible as possible (using the keyboard or a touch device), so that you won't lessen the user experience one bit.

The plugin itself contains no styling - it just adds the HTML elements and functionality I think is optimal to style a beautiful form. It's still far from done (but in working order and licensed under the GNU GPL v3), so go check it out now! I'd love to get your thoughts on Forrst.

getPostForm

Also inspired by a task I got during my working hours, I've flicked together a very simple plugin that allows you to cross-post using both the GET and the POST object from only one form. This cna be very useful in edge case scenarios where you need to post to a third-party service (as we did), and they demand to recieve some data in one object and some in another.

I really can't think of any other cases where you'd need this, but it was so easy to convert it to a plugin that I couldn't resist the opportunity. I hope some of you might put it to some good use. Please share your thoughts on Forrst.

getPostForm Light-weight jQuery plugin to multi-post via the GET and POST objects from the same form.simpleFormUI jQuery plugin to insert (semantic-inspired) functional elements around elements that usually are difficult to style cross-browser.