The jQuery JavaScript library is one of the web’s most popular JavaScript programming tools. Both developers and designers know jQuery features and functionality well: thanks to good design, the library is among the most concise and expedient JavaScript libraries to use. This goes a long way to helping simplify HTML document traversing, animations, event handling, and Ajax interaction when you’re trying to do rapid web development.
jQuery plugins let you take the library one step further. Using plugins, you can add new features and enhance your web applications, doing things you didn’t think possible.
Here are some of the most useful must have jQuery plugins out there.
Grid-A-Licious
Looking to create a Pinterest-style floating grid layout? There are many ways of doing it, but Grid-A-Licious differentiates itself by offering a responsive solution. Regardless of device or screen size, the Grid-A-Licious grid always fits perfectly because it’s fluid and floating. No absolute positioning is used. Grid-A-Licious also lets you customize width, animation duration/speed/effect, and gutter.
Sly Item Scrolling for jQuery
Sly gives you item-based scrolling and a variety of useful options. Item-based means you can scroll image or content galleries. Inside a container element, visitors can browse items using a scroller or provided functions (like next, next page, to start, to end, etc) Sly features different navigation logic options, letting you auto position items or keep the active item centered. Sly supports infinite scrolling and it can be used both vertically and horizontally.
Gamma Gallery
Gamma Gallery is officially an “experimental” plugin. Gamma Gallery creates a fully responsive web image gallery, which is otherwise very hard to do. Thanks to Gamma Gallery, you can achieve an effect similar to the proposed W3C “picture” element. Image sizes are suitable for both full image view and fluid grid thumbnails. Because the sizing of gallery images depends on the container dimensions as well, you can still load larger thumbnails on a smaller screen if you want to cut the column count in a grid in order to display on a smaller device.
Kwicks Sliding Panels
The “Kwicks” sliding elements effect became popular thanks to the old MooTools. Now there’s a version for jQuery. The Kwicks plugin takes flexible markup, letting a container wrap the sliding panels. Kicks can be customized according to desired size, panel max-min width, margin between panels, effect duration and easing, and triggering behavior.
Supersized!
Supersized provides fullscreen, beautiful image slideshows with jQuery. It’s capable of resizing images in order to fill a browser window while maintaining aspect ratios, cycling images via slideshow with transitions, and integrating with Flickr. Supersized also has support for keyboard navigation support.
jQuery Shadow
jQuery Shadow is a simple but extremely effective plugin for creating multiple different sizes of dynamic drop shadows on the fly.
As one of the Web’s most popular JavaScript libraries, there are thousands of jQuery plugins out there. These are some of the most useful ones, letting you leap beyond jQuery’s existing functionality and accomplish things you may not have thought possible.
