11 amazing jQuery plugins that will make web design effortless
Unless you are in the business o information technology, there are terms that you will never know their true gravity. There are things like the incredibly popular JavaScript. It is one of those features that people have been talking about for so long a time, they are practically common place. There is HTML plus a bunch of other things to think about. However, understanding just how important they are can be quite a challenge. Few people really know how to describe them including web developers. Most of these professionals simply know what they are but they might not be able to explain anything about it.
Enter JQuery
There is the highly popular JQuery feature which everyone is talking about currently. This one is even harder for some to talk about. Generally, it is small JavaScript library that is packed with a whole lot of features. It makes so many things simple such as the HTM document traversal as well as manipulation, animation and event handling so much easier. It is equipped with a very user-friendly API that works excellently across a variety of web browsers.
It is such tools that make work for many professionals so much simpler. Web developers and designers do not have to worry about a bunch of codes that make websites more dynamic and interactive. It is not their business to be concerned with such things anymore. The JQuery feature has made web design so much easier and faster. You can save a lot of time and energy as a designer if you know exactly how to use it and plug-ins that you can employ. Some of the most popular JQuery plugins include the likes of:
- nanoGallery
This plugin is designed to make the image galleries simpler. It comes with multi-level navigation in albums, slideshow, pagination, image lazy load, themes, combinable hover effects, deep linking, customizability and the ability to pull in pictures from all sorts of areas including Google Plus, Flickr and Picasa photo albums plus many others. It is fast and it also allows for cloud storage- not mentioning incredibly responsive.
- MixItUp
This is a jQuery and CSS3 (cascading style sheet 3) plugin for filtering and sorting. At the most basic level it will give you the ability to quickly sort and filter through categorized content with amazingly fluid animation. It is perfect for portfolios, blogs and even the eCommerce websites. This is not forgetting that it is also free for commercial use.
- Menu-Aim
You have got to love this one as well. It is a really simple yet incredibly clever plugin that can differentiate between someone who is trying to hover over a dropdown item and one who is trying to navigate into the contents of the submenu. It will calculate the intention of the users as they interact with your menu system. It is great for preventing menus from becoming twitchy as the cursor shifts into a sub-menu.
- Tooltipster
This one allows you the opportunity to present totally HTML-enabled tooltips in semantic markups with the cascading style sheet used to control the site’s display. There are several configuration options available that will help to make it customizable in just about any scenario.
- Magnific PopUp
This one is a lightbox plugin for JQuery. It is focused on being so light in weight and as compatible as can be. It has been developed with performance and the experience of the user in mind. Therefore it does not have all the features that come with alternative lightbox plugins. Be that as it may, it is incredibly fast plus it works excellent across a wide array of devices including the MacBook Pro which has a high-DPI (retina).
- Fit Text
This is also one of those extremely handy plugins that allow you to fill the width of your container with your type. It does this all the while automatically scaling the text size to suit (either up or down). It is designed in such a way that it makes possible responsive headlines. It can also integrate with another plugin (Lettering.js) to make granular per character styling possible.
- Windows
Nothing makes it easy for you to build full-screen scrolling websites that come with sections that fill the screen than this plugin. The callbacks as the user moves between sections make it very simple to react to nice feature and events. It is a very designer-friendly tool that will totally make your life easy.
- Unslider
Simple, effortless but totally sophisticated- this is the best description of Unslider. It is little plugin that does not come with the whistles and bells characteristic of many other plugins. It is an image slider and it only slides- nothing more. Nonetheless this makes it extremely responsive and super lightweight. The slides can contain HTML and can be configured with CSS. There is a built-in keyboard control support system as well.
- Hook
It adds the pull-to-refresh functionality that has been only characteristic of mobile apps till now. This plugin allows you to load any additional content or to refresh your current view. It provides the structure that is needed to capture the pull event effortlessly.
- Cool Kitten
Responsiveness is always paramount. This plugin supports mobile use- a very important feature that every website must have. It supports browsers on smartphones, desktops, tablets and a whole lot of other devices. It also includes a fluid grid that makes it such a fantastic feature to start with if you are creating a super responsive web design. It creates a very smooth parallax movement as one is scrolling.
- Tubular
Have you always wondered how people set a YouTube video as the background of a page? Well this is the plugin that they use. Setting up this plugin is very simple and using it is even simpler. It provides exceptional visual interest to the layout of the page.
Conclusion
These are some of the world’s finest plugins created for jQuery. Remember that the lighter the plugin is the better the performance of your website. Most of these are extra light to make sure that your page loads in less a few seconds. Regardless of the features you are looking for in your site, you can always find a jQuery plugin that will make it possible for you to do exactly this effortlessly.
Author Bio: Jack is an web design consultant who runs a wed design house called Choc Chip Digital. Also he is specialized in graphic design and other design related activities.