You may have noticed over the last few years that the time you spend on the internet has become increasingly immersive and more engaging. This evolution of the web is driven by many things, from faster browsers to more powerful hardware, the exponential growth of social media to bolder design and development ambitions. Please follow the links to some of the outstanding tools Jquery presents us with and you will see how this pallet is currently changing the face of contemporary web design.

 

As a web designer I am always looking for new and interesting ways to present information and when I first discovered Jquery I very quickly realised this incredible resource was going to change the way I saw the web. In 2006 John Resig, a young JavaScript developer from Boston released the first edition of Jquery which is a cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.

 

Jquery is an open source syntax that allows us to create animations, handle events and utilise aspects of Ajax without getting bogged down with the full force of JavaScript which can take many months to get to grips with. It is this lightweight and easy to manage aspect of Jquery that makes it very appealing to designers that are visually minded as opposed to full time programmers.

Before Jquery our options were considerably limited to the features of html and Flash and this meant a weigh up between restricted visual dynamics and the embedded flash format. These were bleak times!

 

With the use of Jquery we are able to apply simple and smooth animation to page elements that engage the user on a completely different level. Instead of simply using the webpage a source of information, we are able to create an environment that makes it possible to sell an idea visually as opposed to relying on pictures or the user’s imagination.

 

There is still progress to be made and limitation is all around us, however these leaps forward will continue to give us drive to create new and interesting web design. I have included 5 of my favorite Jquery features below:

 

1. LavaLamp

http://www.gmarwaha.com/blog/category/client-side/jquery/

 

2. Contact Form

http://www.ericmmartin.com/projects/simplemodal-demos/

 

3. Jqueryrotate

http://code.google.com/p/jqueryrotate/wiki/Examples

 

4. Tool Tip

http://flowplayer.org/tools/tooltip/index.html

 

5. Mobily Blocks

http://playground.mobily.pl/jquery/mobily-blocks/demo.html