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Form Elements: 40+ CSS/JS Styling and Functionality Techniques

Designing effective web forms isn’t easy, as we need to figure out more practical styling and functionality techniques to provide a great user experience.

Recently there have been a number of noteworthy techniques such as styling different form fields, live validation, Context highlighting, trading options from field to another, slider controls and more – using CSS and different Javascript libraries. Below we present findings of search to more than 40 tutorials and demos to showcase the capabilities and robustness of CSS and Javascript.

You might be interested to check other CSS related posts:

• 47+ Excellent Ajax CSS Forms
• Using CSS to Do Anything: 50+ Creative Examples and Tutorials

1-Styling dropdown select boxes- To style a dropdown select box is heavy work. This is an experiement on how you can style select box options items.

2-<select> Something New, Part 1-With a little DOM scripting and some creative CSS, you too can make your <select>s beautiful… and you won’t have to sacrifice accessibility, usability or graceful degradation.

3-Styling even more form controls-There are a lot of controls that can be used in an HTML form. Roger Johansson offers an extensive report on the ways you can use CSS to style web form controls.

4-Check it, don’t select it-The biggest problem with multiple-select boxes is that selecting multiple options is a pain, especially if there are enough to create a scrollbar within the box. Here is a good technique for replacing the cumbersome select box with a scrollable checklist. You can check the demo here.

5-DropDown – xHTML/CSS/Javascript replacement of classic selectbox-While there is no problem with styling input fields, styling selectbox is more complicated and solution isn’t perfect. This tutorial brought visualy better solution based on xHTML/CSS/Javascript called dropdowns.

6-Masked Input Plugin- A masked input plugin for the jQuery javascript library. It allows a user to more easily enter fixed width input where you would like them to enter the data in a certain format (dates,phone numbers, etc). It has been tested on Internet Explorer 6/7, Firefox 1.5/2, Safari, and Opera.

7-Custom Checkbox with jQuery- Provides the ability to customize the design of checkboxes in your web forms. You can use the default skin and the Safari skin which are provided with the package.

8-LiveValidation- LiveValidation is a small open source javascript library for making client-side validation quick, easy, and powerful. It comprises of two main parts. Firstly, it provides developers with a rich set of core validation methods, which can also be used outside the context of forms. Secondly, it provides your visitors with real-time validation information as they fill out forms, helping them to get it right first time, making the forms easier, quicker and less daunting to complete.

9-FancyForm- FancyForm is a powerful checkbox replacement script used to provide the ultimate flexibility in changing the appearance and function of HTML form elements. It’s easy to use and degrades gracefully on all older, non-supporting browsers.

10-Styling disabled text inputs- A disabled text input usually has a grayed-out look, and the value is not able to be modified by user input. Here is how you can style them. You can also check this demo page for different examples Styling disabled form controls with CSS

11-PrettyCheckboxes- A simple jQuery plugin to customize the checkboxes and radio buttons.

12- Building a better web forms: Context highlighting using jQuery- Due to complexity of web appications, sometimes you often need to find a way to focus a user on a current context. Here is a nice way of achieving this effect. Check out the demo here

13-Control.SelectMultiple This control uses a combination of a standard select input, and a collection of checkbox inputs to create an alternative to the standard select multiple control. It’s primary benefit besides a vastly improved experience for selecting multiple items is that for single item selection, it behaves like a normal select input.

14- Justify elements using jQuery and CSS- When creating a web form you have to make a functional and visually aligned layout. You can do so by justifing all labels to have the same width. And the simplest way to do this is to use jQuery.

15-jQuery Form Input Example Plugin- A jQuery plugin to specify examples within form inputs (i.e. text fields and text areas) that disappear on user focus. Check out the demo here.

16-Jquery-Autotab- Autotab is a jQuery plugin that provides auto-tabbing and filtering on text fields in a form

17-jquery-asmselect- A progressive enhancement to “select multiple” form elements. Check out a demo here and here.

18-jQuery.AddToList- A very customisable plugin that hooks into select lists. An ‘open-form’ event or trigger value display a form (any dom element you specific, that contains a <form>). AddToList will then ajax submit the form, and if it’s successful, and a new item to your list. Check out a demo here.

19-Easy Multi Select Transfer with jQuery- A perfect example to demonstrate the simple and compact nature of jQuery coding allowing options to be traded from one multi select to another.

20-fValidator- fValidator is an open source (free) unobtrusive javascript tool for easy handling form validation. Check out the examples here.

21-Grow a textarea-Just make a form, and this script will add the ability to resize each textarea.

22-jQuery selectbox replacement- This is an unobtrusive jQuery plugin that allows you to replace the HTML select box with a styled dropdown menu. Check out the demo here.

23-Unobtrusive Slider Control V2- Sliders can be associated with both text input and select list form elements. All of the slider’s configuration parameters should be defined within the associated form element’s className Check out the demo here.

24- jQuery Field Plug-in- This plugin greatly expands the ability to retrieve and set values in forms beyond jQuery's standard val() method (and Mike Alsup's Form Plug-in's fieldArray() method) by allowing you to interact with all types of form field elements (except input[@type="file"], which is a read-only element.) It works the same way for text elements as it does for radio, checkbox and select elements.

25-jquery.combobox- jquery.combobox is an unobtrusive way of creating a HTML type combobox from a existing HTML Select element(s).
A combobox is technically a ‘Select’ HTML element. Check out the demo here.

26-Checkboxes, Radio Buttons, Select Lists, Custom HTML Form Elements- This JavaScript and CSS will allow you to use custom images for checkboxes, radio buttons and select lists.

27-ToggleFormText plug-in example- ToggleFormText is a jQuery plugin to enable help text for input fields.

28-Password field with strength meter- Password strength meter extension class for the extjs library.

29-STYLING FILE INPUTS WITH CSS AND THE DOM- File inputs are the bane of beautiful form design. No rendering engine provides the granular control over their presentation designers desire. This simple, three-part progressive enhancement provides the markup, CSS, and JavaScript to address the long-standing irritation.

30-Pin plugin for Prototype, Remember Field’s Values- Pin plugin for prototype which aims to remember some field’s values. Check out the demo here.

31-accessible, javascript-enhanced, css-able form elements for mootools- A javascript-class (based on mootools) customFormElements, which gives you the opportunity to style your own checkboxes and radiobuttons via css.

32-Resizeable Textboxes- What we are going to create today is a textbox with resize handles on the bottom, right, and bottom-right corner. The resize handles do what you might expect – grabbing the right edge will let you resize the width, grabbing the bottom will let you resize the height, and grabbing the corner will let you resize either.

33-Resizeable Textboxes- Browsers do not let you style file inputs. File Style plugin fixes this problem. It enables you to use image as browse button. You can also style filename field as normal textfield using css. It is written using JavaScript and jQuery. Check out the demo here.

34-jQuery AlphaNumeric- jQuery AlphaNumeric is a javascript control plugin that allows you to limit what characters a user can enter on textboxes or textareas.

35-Mootools Form Hints- Mootools/Javascript Form Helper
Allows inline help in form input fields.

36-MultiSelect- MutliSelect is a clean way to display a drop down and allow multiple options to be selected with just the mouse and without taking up more room that you need. With just a single line of code, MultiSelect styles up any select with a new and simple drop down. Check out the example here.

37- Watermark Input Plugin- This is a watermark input plugin for jQuery. Currently this is a beta release. This simple plugin allows forms with limited space to display additional information about the contents of a field.

38-Select box manipulation

39-Spinner Control How to integrate Spinner control on your form inputs.

40-Autohelp Sometimes it’s important to tell the user what’s expected of him. Especially when filling out a complicated form. This plugin uses the title attribute to display help in a separate DOM element.

41-Custom Select boxes with jquery – A working example of a jquery custom select box with icons. Check out the demo here

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 3:46 pm and is filed under CSS, TUTORIAL.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.