There’s no doubt that JavaScript is the king of front-end scripting. It’s a fascinating language to create visual effects without any need for backend programming. This is why JavaScript is a natural choice for creating big data charts, graphs, tables, or dynamic interfaces.

The following resources are perfect for any developer that need to build chart-based data for their website(s). Data libraries are often quite detailed, with lots of extra methods and parameters. But as you practice coding and learn JavaScript, setting up a new data chart will become like second nature.

Chart.js

HTML5 is the future of layout rendering and Chart.js is here to usher data charts into that future. Chart.js is perhaps the classic open source library for generating any type of data chart, graph, or visualization element.

Everything is rendered using HTML5 with the added benefit of a canvas element for dynamic effects. Graphs rendered onto an HTML5 canvas allow for hover tooltips and click events to access more information about charted data. The various options range from pie charts, bar charts, radar charts, line charts, and other more advanced styles.

jqPlot

jqPlot renders content as static images which are embedded dynamically. This means chart data can be updated via Ajax without even refreshing the page. Some chart types even have hover options which display related data on hover.

Although there are dozens of various chart styles, the default chart themes are somewhat bland. jqPlot will require a little TLC to get it working nicely into your layout – but it’s certainly a great tool for rendering more complicated datasets.

Chartist.js

Another personal favorite of mine is the Chartist.js library. The homepage itself is simply brilliant and very easy to navigate. This means it’s easy to skim the documentation to find answers for setup and customization.

Each chart type is fully responsive and highly customizable from sizes to color schemes. Chartist relies on SVG to render graphs as images onto the page dynamically. There are fallback options for older browsers. However, the more modern versions will support all the great features like data animation.

HighchartTable

Don’t let the name fool you on this one. Although HighchartTable may seem like it’s meant for displaying HTML tables, it’s actually a plugin which converts tabular data into graphs.

This is a jQuery plugin which is also based off another library named Highcharts. In order to get HighchartTable to function you’ll first need to include the two dependencies(both of which are free). Then you can setup an HTML table and convert the design into a fully-fledged chart. Take a peek at some of the live demos to see how the plugin works.

xCharts

xCharts is meant for more advanced users that are familiar with data visualization. This plugin is based off the D3.js library for rendering in-page graphics and dynamic visuals.

Everything rendered through xCharts is adaptable and malleable. It’s easy to add your own animations or easing functions when interacting with the data. Everything is written using plain JavaScript with array values for the content. The xChart examples page has loads of samples with live easing effects.

C3.js

The open source C3.js library is based on the D3.js library. It’s meant to simplify the process of rendering data charts onto an HTML page without requiring a whole lot of custom D3 chart code.

All of the data is fully dynamic and customizable, from tooltips to graph colors. The best part is that C3.js builds on top of the D3.js library, so it’s easier for new developers to comprehend.

Pizza Pie Charts

Pizza Pie Charts is a well-known JavaScript library built by ZURB for rendering SVG-based pie charts. All of the various display settings and options can be modified directly in CSS or JavaScript.

Zurb is a trusted source for great code, so you know the library is of the highest quality. The only distinction is that Pizza Pie Charts is really best for rendering data into pie charts. Other chart styles would best be found in another library.

Flot

With a simple name like Flot you might expect this plugin to have some negligible features. But surprisingly Flot for jQuery is a minimal yet diverse plugin for data visualization.

The primary benefit of using Flot is the capability of creating animated plotting diagrams. This way, you can have data move through a stream representing large groups of various results. Those who want to grasp the potential of Flot may enjoy perusing the examples directory.

Dygraphs

Developers that are still familiarizing themselves with JavaScript can benefit from a library such as Dygraphs. The initialization code is relatively simple and it doesn’t take a lot of effort to get your first graph onto a webpage.

This library can handle enormous datasets plotting on a variety of graphs. Mobile devices also support interactivity through pinch & zoom display effects. If you wish to plot data with JavaScript, then Dygraphs is a wonderful library for getting started without any dependencies.

Protovis

No Longer Under Active Development

Advanced visualizations require a lot more in the realm of data processing. Protovis is definitely one of the more complex data chart libraries. You’ll really want to have a decent grasp of JavaScript before tackling a project with this script.

However, Protovis does have the capability of rendering exceptionally unique chart styles. The examples page is full of both conventional and customized chart demonstrations. Data organization ranges from simple pie charts to networks, tree diagrams, and even full-scale maps.

These chart libraries should be more than enough for the average web developer. Regardless of your skill level, there is always a solution for every developer, from the complete newcomer up to the wise old master.

And best of all, web standards will continue to gain support for even greater methods of data visualization and user interactivity.

The post 10 Open-Source JavaScript Data Chart Libraries Worth Considering appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

If you’re looking for a super-easy way to implement various jQuery effects or functionality, there are some outstanding WordPress plugins that are up to the task. Here are ten freebies that will help you to harness the power of jQuery – all without the need for writing JavaScript.

jQuery Updater

The version of jQuery that comes with WordPress is not the latest and greatest. In fact, it tends to be quite a bit behind the jQuery project itself.

If you don’t need the backward compatibility of the older versions, jQuery Updater will install the latest stable release on your website. Should you run into problems, deactivating the plugin will put things back the way they were.

Date Picker by Input WP

Date Picker works in tandem with other plugins to convert a standard text input into a jQuery-powered, date-based suite of fields. Choose between a standard date picker, time picker, date ranges, and more. Plus, you can block out dates, making it suitable for use with a booking form.

The free version integrates with Contact Form 7 and Divi, while going pro adds compatibility with Gravity Forms and Ninja Forms.

Q2W3 Fixed Widget for WordPress

Fixed-position widgets are great for keeping information in front of your site’s visitors. Items like shopping carts, navigation and banner ads will stay in view, even as a user scrolls. Q2W3 Fixed Widget for WordPress makes it easy to make any widget a “sticky” one, courtesy of jQuery.

Install the plugin, activate it, click into a widget and select the “Fixed Widget” option.

FancyBox for WordPress

Web designers have long used Fancybox jQuery lightbox to add both utility and interactivity to images. The FancyBox for WordPress plugin makes it easy to integrate this tool into your website.

Any thumbnail linked to an image will automatically load in an attractive lightbox when clicked. In addition, you can customize the look and special effects via a back-end settings panel.

Smooth Scroll Page Up/Down Buttons

Add smooth scrolling effects in the form of handy up and down buttons. Click a button and it will scroll the current page (smoothly, of course) to the next or previous page/section. There’s also an optional “back to top” button.

JQuery Validation for Contact Form 7

This plugin adds jQuery form validation to the popular Contact Form 7. Easily validate the content of form fields including URLs, email addresses, dates, numbers and more.

jQuery Post Splitter

jQuery Post Splitter takes the ability of WordPress to split up large posts into multiple pages and turns it into a unique slider. So, instead of having to click on pagination and manually load in subsequent pages, the plugin uses jQuery and Ajax to quickly load in new slides of content.

It’s a much smoother and more seamless way to navigate through a long multi-part post.

Rotating Tweets

The standard Twitter Widget isn’t very flexible. Rotating Tweets brings a bit of jQuery to the fold by allowing your latest tweets to show one at a time in an animated rotation. You can display tweets as a widget or use a WordPress Shortcode.

Tabs Responsive

Easily add tabbed content within your WordPress posts and pages using a drag and drop interface. Tabs can be created within a page, post or widget. Horizontal and vertical layouts are available. Tabs Responsive also includes support for Font Awesome icons as well.

Equal Height Columns

Using a tiny, 8kb jQuery script, Equal Height Columns uses our spotlighted JS library to solve a web designer’s pet-peeve. Tell the plugin the targeted selectors and it does the rest. The plugin is also responsive, so you can have your fancy equally-tall columns on mobile devices, too.

All That’s Good: Brought to you by jQuery

A quick search around the WordPress Plugin Repository for jQuery brings up quite a volume of results.

It shows how popular, stable, and trusted the venerable library has become. So, whether you’re looking to add special effects like animation or some advanced functionality, chances are there is a WordPress plugin using jQuery to help you achieve your goals.

The post 10 Free WordPress Plugins for Adding jQuery Effects to Your Site appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

If you look closely, you’ll find decades-old technology. And it’s not limited to outdated websites. The fingerprints of the past are all over cutting-edge sites as well.

Sure, many of these technologies have evolved. Others have faded into the background. But we still rely on them. Perhaps more than we think.

With that, here’s a look at the old-school tech that continues to shape the web development industry.

Apache HTTP Server

Apache is no longer the top dog in web servers. However, the platform still holds a significant market share. W3Techs reports that it runs on over 30% of servers. That’s a close second to competitor Nginx.

Equally impressive is Apache’s longevity. Its initial release came way back in 1995.

The web was a much different place in those days. Most websites of that era consisted of static HTML. Let’s not forget about the low-powered hardware and limited bandwidth as well.

Apache has managed to keep up with the times. It’s a highly scalable platform that can handle large amounts of traffic. It also supports next-gen tech like HTTP/2 and IPv6.

Plus, Apache is responsible for many familiar technologies of its own. Development staples like .htaccess, gzip compression, and URL rewriting are supported.

jQuery

People continue to write off jQuery. But it’s hard to find evidence of a slowdown. The JavaScript library is used on over 77% of all websites.

Compare that number with its supposed heyday of 2012. Its usage was a mere 49% back then.

Being bundled with WordPress is one factor in jQuery’s growth. The world’s most widely used content management system (CMS) boosts those numbers. But that’s not the only reason.

Many of us are familiar with jQuery. And we know how to use it. That level of comfort continues to make it a go-to library.

Plus, it’s still in active development. jQuery continues to be refined and optimized for performance.

Yes, there are other worthy frameworks. And vanilla JavaScript has come a long way. But we bury jQuery at our own risk.

JPEG Images

We’ve been attempting to replace JPEG images for some time. Newer formats like SVG, WebP, and AVIF promise lossless compression. But this old-school file type from 1992 still bests them.

Both SVG and WebP are gaining ground. Yet JPEG carries on with a nearly 78% usage rate. Why is that?

For one, JPEG has the advantage of being a long-established format. Just about every image editing app supports it. And many of us have become used to saving images this way.

It’s also universally compatible with web browsers. WebP, for instance, doesn’t work with some legacy apps. That’s becoming less of a concern, however. Many of these browsers are vanishing from the landscape.

But after all these years, JPEG still works well for photographs. And its file size outperforms WebP in certain situations. It may not be the best option in every instance. But the format is still a viable choice.

The Command Line

The command line harkens back to a time before the graphical user interface (GUI). You may remember typing commands into MS-DOS if you’re of a certain age. And early systems like Unix were also command-based.

It almost seems ironic that the command line interface (CLI) is still a part of web development. The lineage is there, though. Linux powers many web servers, after all. But it’s also the “Throwback Thursday” of the industry.

Web hosting companies have attempted to replace or supplement the CLI. Visual control panels can replicate some functionality.

But the CLI also brings speed and efficiency to the party. Tools like WordPress have their own CLI flavors. And they can accomplish tasks without the overhead of a GUI.

It also offers fine-grain control over commands. You can target specific database tables or folders with relative ease.

The CLI survives because it’s still incredibly useful. And it beats using punch cards any day.

HTML

Maybe it’s a bit obvious. But no talk of old-school web technologies is complete without HTML. It’s still the basis of what we do.

Conceptualized in 1989, HTML saw its first release in 1991. It has since seen numerous iterations. And it is still evolving to meet the needs of the modern web.

HTML is capable of powering a website by itself. But it no longer stands alone. We can combine it with other languages to get the desired result. That could be CSS, PHP, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, or anything else that comes along.

These additional tools allow us to style and manipulate elements. We can tie in with a database to conditionally produce output. That has paved the way for the complex web applications we see today.

At 30+ years old, HTML is still as relevant as ever. And perhaps more flexible to boot.

Older Tech Continues to Find New Purpose

Longevity isn’t very common on the web. Or not on the front end, at least. Design trends come and go quickly. As do the tools and services we rely on.

But beneath all of that lies a bedrock of foundational technologies. Each of the items above qualifies. They’ve been a part of our job for decades.

And they’re far from the only ones. We didn’t delve into CSS or FTP, for instance. But they, along with dozens of other tools, are vital pieces of the jigsaw for developers.

Their continued presence brings comfort. That’s a good thing in an industry that changes so quickly.

The post How Old-School Technologies Still Shape Web Development appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Its main purpose is to simplify the process of writing complex JavaScript functions by bundling them into methods that can be called with just one line of code. This makes it lightweight and easy to extend with free plugins for almost any functionality you can think of.

However, using jQuery also comes with some potential downsides, such as performance issues, added overhead, a learning curve, specific version dependencies, and compatibility with newer technologies.

Despite these drawbacks, jQuery can still be incredibly useful for legacy systems or specific projects, and it remains a popular choice for many developers. In fact, there are a vast number of jQuery plugins available that can help improve the functionality of your website or application.

In this collection, we share some of our favorite jQuery plugins that we believe can help take your web development projects to the next level.

jQuery Plugins for Layouts

jQuery Navigation & Menu Plugins

jQuery Image & Video Plugins

jQuery Slider, Carousel & Gallery Plugins

jQuery Text Effect Plugins

jQuery Form Element Plugins

jQuery Utility Plugins

…and finally…

More jQuery Plugins

The post The 50 Most Useful jQuery Plugins for Frontend Development appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

With the release of version 5.5, WordPress has started the process of updating the version of jQuery that is shipped with the software. As such, the jQuery Migrate script (which helps to keep older code functioning) has been removed. This has resulted in a lot of bugs for developers to squash.

While many popular, actively developed themes and plugins have released updates to address any issues, not everyone has been so lucky. There’s a wide array of legacy products out there that still rely on that jQuery migrate script and simply break without it.

To be certain, these items are living on borrowed time. But that doesn’t mean you can’t squeeze some extra time out of them. Today, we’ll show you how to keep things running (at least temporarily). Then, we’ll explore why this is (mostly) a good thing for WordPress overall.

A Quick Fix: Enable jQuery Migrate Helper

There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that WordPress has released a plugin, Enable jQuery Migrate Helper, that restores the jQuery Migrate script on your website. This should allow any older scripts to run as they did before WordPress 5.5 came into the picture.

However, this plugin doesn’t just run quietly in the background. It also points out errors and deprecated code via the browser console and within the WordPress dashboard. This is a big help to developers who are looking for some hints as to what needs fixed for future compatibility.

The bad news is that this plugin is really only useful until WordPress 5.6 is released. That release will see a new version of jQuery Migrate bundled with core – one that won’t work with these same legacy scripts that broke down with 5.5.

Of course, the WordPress community is pretty skilled at providing alternatives. Plugins such as jQuery Manager for WordPress might keep old code afloat, even after WordPress 5.6 hits the market. And it’s not far-fetched to imagine other similar plugins popping up to do the same.

These solutions can be lifesavers in a pinch. Yet, in the bigger picture, all of this jQuery madness serves as a harbinger of where legacy products are headed.

The Good and Bad of Legacy Support

The overarching point of upgrading WordPress to the latest version of jQuery is that it allows the project to move forward. Backward compatibility has always been a key feature, but there does come a point when it stifles future development.

We also know that WordPress has adopted other JavaScript libraries in recent years. The Gutenberg block editor uses React, for example. Holding onto an old version of one library just doesn’t jibe with using the latest and greatest technologies elsewhere.

That all makes perfect sense on the surface. But tell that to the website owner (and their brave-but-weary developer) who now needs to fix and/or replace legacy code.

To say the very least, it’s an inconvenience. And it might also be expensive to implement solutions that will work now and into the foreseeable future. Because, let’s face it: not every old theme and plugin is going to survive this transition.

Good Riddance to Outdated WordPress Themes and Plugins

Yes, there’s some pain involved. Maybe even a few good memories as well. But just as these old themes and plugins hold WordPress back as a whole, they also hold back the websites running them.

Designers and developers: think about how many times you wanted to implement an exciting new feature, only to be forced into dealing with legacy obstacles in your way. Maybe it’s that 5-year-old page builder or a theme that uses ancient layout techniques. They impede progress.

This jQuery transition may be just the thing we need to kickstart redesigns for older sites. Even if a redesign isn’t in the cards, there is an opportunity for revenue here. Whether it’s a matter of patching up some code or fully replacing an existing piece of software, these tasks can fill up your schedule. That leads to some extra cash in your pocket.

It’s also a matter of eliminating potential troublemakers. Looking through the WordPress plugin repository, it’s easy to find listings that haven’t seen an update in years. While some may still be useful, there are some real risks in using them. Beyond incompatibilities, there could be gaping security holes that are just waiting to be exploited.

This is one way to finally put those ticking timebombs out of reach. That in itself is a positive byproduct of moving away from the old version of jQuery.

The post Why Some Outdated WordPress Plugins & Themes Are Facing Extinction appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Menu items generally lead to a site’s most important pages or areas and help visitors navigate easier. And, as you have to consider multiple screen sizes when designing a menu, making the navigation responsive can often make things much more complicated, especially on larger sites.

As there is no universal solution, the type or style of menu you use will depend on the kind of site you are creating. If it is a small site like a personal portfolio, a <select> drop-down menu or a simple hamburger toggle menu will probably suffice. But suppose it is a larger site like an eCommerce store that relies upon a mega-menu for navigation. In that case, a drawer-style navigation or an animated side panel menu will most likely help you.

JavaScript & jQuery Responsive Menu Plugins

Sidr – Responsive Side Menus

Sidr is an easy-to-use plugin that will create a responsive Facebook-like side menu. It allows you to create multiple ‘sidr’ menus on either side of your layout.

Navgoco Vertical Multi-Level Slide Navigation

Navgoco is a simple jQuery plugin that can turn a nested unordered list of navigation items into a beautiful vertical multi-level slide navigation.

FlexNav Mobile-First Menu

FlexNav is a mobile-first example of using media queries and jQuery to make a robust dropdown menu. From the developer: It is a ‘device-agnostic approach to complex site navigation with support for touch and keyboard accessibility.’

scrollNav.js – Scrolling Responsive Side-Nav

scrollNav is a lightweight jQuery plugin that grabs your page’s existing content, divides it into logical sections, and builds a customizable scrolling sidebar navigation.

Flaunt.js – Nested Click-To-Reveal Navigation

Flaunt.js allows you to create a stylish responsive navigation with nested clicks to reveal.

jVanilla Menu

jVanilla Menu is a simple jQuery menu plugin that takes an existing CSS drop-down menu and adds enhancements such as animations, submenu levels, and timeout delays.

Slidebars – App-Style Push Menu Plugin

Slidebars is a lightweight jQuery plugin that will allow you to add an app-style push menu to your website or application easily.

scotchPanels.js – Off-Canvas Menus

scotchPanels.js is a jQuery plugin for creating an off-canvas menu and other panel types such as images, videos, and iframes.

SmartMenus

SmartMenus is a feature-rich plugin for creating both horizontal or vertical menus. Responsive and accessible. There are also Bootstrap add-ons available.

jQuery Menu Aim

Menu Aim is a dropdown (both horizontal or vertical) plugin that can differentiate between a user hovering over a dropdown item versus trying to navigate into a submenu content.

jQuery slimMenu

slimMenu is a lightweight jQuery plugin that makes it easy to create responsive and multi-level navigation menus on the fly.

jPanelMenu – Animated Paneled-Style Menu

jPanelMenu is a jQuery plugin for creating a smooth animated paneled-style menu. The animation is handled by CSS transitions.

Naver – Mobile Friendly Navigation

Naver is a simple plugin that automatically turns a basic navigation system into a mobile-friendly one.

HorizontalNav

The HorizontalNav plugin will span a horizontal navigation to fit the full width of its container and comes with an option to make it responsive.

jQuery.mmenu

jQuery.mmenu is a plugin for creating slick, app-like sliding menus for your mobile website with only one line of JavaScript: $("#nav").mmenu();.

TinyNav.js

TinyNav.js is a lightweight plugin (452 bytes) that converts <ul> and <ol> menus into a select dropdown. It also automatically selects the current page and adds selected="selected" to that item.

Responsive-Menu

Responsive-Menu is a tiny jQuery plugin that will turn your site’s navigation into a dropdown (<select>) when your browser is at the preset mobile width.

MeanMenu

MeanMenu is a media query-independent plugin for converting a standard menu into a mobile responsive menu. It is not a menu system replacement but simply some lightweight jQuery to convert a standard menu into a mobile version.

Responsive Navigation CSS & JS Tutorials

Planning and creating a menu that works as intended on mobile devices is the trickiest area of building any responsive layout. To help you out, we have a selection of responsive navigation tutorials that will take you through each step.

• CSS Alternatives to JavaScript Navigation (CSS)
  Learn how to create a JavaScript-free hamburger menu, horizontal scroller, or have the menu on a separate page.
• Responsive Off-Screen Menus(CSS)
  Learn how to create a slide and push menu using CSS transitions.
• Full Width Responsive Tiled Menu(CSS)
  Create a fully responsive tiled navigation, with a little JavaScript to show/hide the navigation on smaller screen widths.
• Responsive Multi-Level Navigation(CSS & jQuery)
  Create a horizontal drop-down menu, with up to two levels of sub-menus that appear when the parent element is hovered over. On smaller screens, a menu button will display the menu vertically.
• Responsive CSS Navigation Menu(CSS-only)
  Learn how to create a responsive menu, without any JavaScript, using clean and semantic HTML5 markup. The menu can be aligned left, center, or right.
• Top Drawer – Smooth Responsive Dropdown Menu(CSS & jQuery)
  This tutorial will show you how to create a smoother reveal mobile menu using CSS rather than animating it with JavaScript.
• Simple Responsive Navigation(CSS & jQuery)
  Learn how to build a responsive menu from the ground up using CSS media queries and a little jQuery to display the menu on a smaller mobile screen.
• Simple & Responsive Mobile First Navigation(CSS-only)
  Learn how to build a simple mobile layout and navigation, then using media queries, progressively enhance the design for larger screens.
• Responsive Navigation Menu Tutorial
  With this tutorial, you will learn how to code a simple responsive navigation menu that you will be able to easily modify and reuse in your own projects.

Responsive Navigation Patterns

A selection of resources that discuss the pros and cons of the many different responsive menu options. Learn how you should handle responsive navigations and discover which solution best suits your current project.

• Responsive Navigation Patternsby Brad Frost
• A Brief Overview on Responsive Navigation Patternsby Chris Poteet
• 7 Responsive Navigation Patternsby Steven Bradley

More CSS Menu & Navigation Snippets

The post 30 Simple Responsive Navigation Solutions & Tutorials appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

In this article, we’ve curated a selection of powerful, reliable, and easy-to-use form validation plugins that can make your life much easier. Whether you’re building a simple contact form or a complex multi-step checkout process, these plugins offer a range of features and customization options to fit your specific needs.

So, if you’re tired of struggling with form validation, check out these plugins and libraries and see how they can streamline your workflow and improve the user experience on your website or application.

Parsley.js

Parsley.js is a lightweight and feature-rich form validation library that offers a unique approach to form validation. Instead of validating forms with JavaScript, it uses data attributes embedded in the DOM to achieve the same function.

This makes it easy to configure and highly customizable, with the ability to override almost every default behavior to fit your specific form requirements.

quickValidation.js

QuickValidation.js is a form validation library that operates similarly to Parsley.js above. It uses a data-validate attribute in the input tag to assign validation rules, rather than defining them in the JavaScript code.

For example, you can string together rules like required,number, or range=0-99, and then add the .quickValidate class and a data-name attribute to name your field for errors.

jQuery Ketchup Plugin

Ketchup is a lightweight form validation plugin that comes bundled with 18 basic validations and allows you to quickly write your own validations and override default behaviors. With a minified size of only 3.4KB, it’s a lightweight plugin for validating your forms.

The plugin checks a form field’s data-validate attribute by default to find matching validations. Validations are separated by commas and can be grouped together within a single validate() indicator. Additionally, validations can have arguments, which are also separated by commas.

jQuery Validation Plugin

jQuery Validation is a user-friendly plugin that simplifies client-side form validation. With a “drop-in” installation process, it’s easy to use the plugin on your website or application. The plugin comes bundled with a useful set of validation methods and provides an API to allow for custom validations.

To use the plugin, you simply need to add a single line of jQuery to select the form and apply the plugin, along with annotations on each element to specify the validation rules. This makes it quick and easy to implement form validation and ensure that user input is accurate and complete.

IV.js – Javascript Input Validation

IV.js is a jQuery library that simplifies the process of validating user input and working with validation filters. To use IV.js, simply add the IValidate class to your form, and you’re ready to start validating user input.

FormValidation

The FormValidation library offers extensive support for various input types and validation rules, such as required fields, email validation, phone number validation, credit card validation, and more. The library also provides real-time feedback to users while they are filling out the form, indicating whether their input is valid or not.

It also provides seamless integrations with popular front-end frameworks such as Bootstrap, Foundation, Materialize, and Semantic UI. This integration feature ensures consistency in user interfaces and makes it easy for developers to add the form validation library to their existing codebase.

Guardian

Guardian is a versatile jQuery plugin designed to provide robust and customizable form validation. It offers flexibility and extensibility, allowing developers to tailor the validation rules to meet specific project needs.

Validatr

Validatr is a powerful JavaScript library that leverages HTML5 input attributes to provide comprehensive form validation. It supports various input types, including color, date, email, number, and range, and provides flexible validation rules for the input types text, checkbox, and radio.

The library uses native validation wherever possible, using Modernizr to test for browser support. When a specific input type is not natively supported, Validatr uses its own ruleset to supplement the validation process. Regardless of the input type, the validation message is displayed to the user, providing clear feedback on any validation errors.

Formance.js

Formance.js a powerful library that provides formatting and validation for form fields, inspired by the popular jQuery.payment library from Stripe. The library is designed to offer comprehensive support for various input types and validation rules, ensuring a smooth and reliable user experience.

While client-side validation can be bypassed, it still plays an essential role in enhancing the user experience. With this library, you can take advantage of client-side validation to improve the quality of user inputs and reduce the number of errors submitted.

jQuery Validate

jQuery Validate is a versatile jQuery plugin designed to make form validation easy and efficient using data attributes. With this plugin, developers can easily set up validation rules for various form inputs, including required fields, email addresses, phone numbers, and more.

jQuery Form Validate

jQuery Form Validate is a powerful jQuery plugin designed to simplify and streamline the form validation process. With this plugin, developers can quickly and easily validate HTML forms by utilizing HTML5 data attributes applied to each input.

One-Validation

One-Validation is a comprehensive library of regular expressions designed for general validation purposes. With this library, developers can easily validate various input types, including email addresses, phone numbers, URLs, and more, using the power of regular expressions.

Validarium

Validarium is a simple and easy-to-use jQuery validation plugin that builds on the powerful jQuery Validate library. With Validarium, developers can quickly and efficiently validate form inputs using various validation rules, including required fields, email addresses, phone numbers, and more.

Validate Barebones Validation

Validate Barebones Validation is a powerful and versatile jQuery validation plugin designed to provide a customizable and extendable solution for form validation. As the name suggests, this plugin offers a barebones framework for developers to build upon, allowing for maximum flexibility and customization.

The post 15 Form Validation jQuery Plugins & Libraries appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Fortunately, there are many free date picker plugins available that can enhance the user experience and make it easier to pick dates. Adding a date picker to your form is a straightforward process, and once you learn how to do it, you’ll never go back. That’s why we’ve scoured the web to find the best date picker plugins and compiled them all in one post for your convenience.

In this collection, you’ll find a variety of plugins, including vanilla JS plugins, jQuery plugins, and extensions for popular frameworks like The 40 Best Free Bootstrap 5 Templates & Themes for 2023Bootstrap. No matter your needs, we’re confident you’ll find a plugin that works for you. With these plugins, you can improve your users’ experience and make it easier for them to select dates on your website or application.

1. Flatpickr

The lightweight Flatpickr plugin is easy to use and even easier to setup. It’s designed with simplicity, so the default UI should blend into any layout. If you take a peek at the examples page, you’ll notice this date picker isn’t very complex. But that’s often what users want: a simple interface to input data and move on.

With Flatpickr, you can customize the initial date, month, and year along with restrictions on which date(s) can be picked. Plus, you can add an optional time parameter using the 12H or 24H clock. This is undoubtedly one of the better date picker plugins for its design, UX, and features.

2. Pickadate.js

Another choice I really like is the Pickadate.js plugin. This is designed to be mobile-friendly and fully responsive, so it’s a great solution for all devices.

Pickadate runs on jQuery, so you need that library as a dependency. However, this file is pretty lightweight, and it doesn’t take much to get it working, so even with jQuery, you shouldn’t notice any page lags. This offers a date and a time selection menu, so it’s a fully-featured option no matter what data you’re collecting.

3. Date Range Picker

Input range pickers are extremely common with scheduling programs and visual data applications. For example, Google Analytics uses its own date range picker for visitor data over a specific website.

To recreate this effect try the Date Range Picker. It’s designed to fit into Bootstrap’s CSS stylesheet but can also be used solo. Plus, it supports multi-month pickers, single-month pickers, and pre-defined values for common date ranges(past week, past month, etc.).

4. Datepair.js

To use something a little simpler for range selection, try Datepair.js. This relies on dual input fields for selecting the starting date & ending date of a range. It can also include time ranges based on your settings and how you configure the plugin.

Is this better than a single date picker UI? That’s up to you(or your client) to decide. But this is a simple plugin to set up, and your visitors may prefer the single field inputs.

5. DateTimePicker

Here’s one of the more unique plugins with quite an abnormal interface. The DateTimePicker plugin has its own responsive dropdown menu that lets the user select their date/time using plus & minus icons.

On the one hand, this is easier to jump around and quickly change the month/year with a few taps. But it’s also not the typical calendar UI, so it may take some adjusting from users who aren’t familiar with this interface.

There are pros & cons to everything, so I say take a peek at the plugin and see what you think. This does support separate date & time inputs, but you can also combine them, making datetime selection just one click away.

6. glDatePicker

For a detailed design and tons of optional features, check out the glDatePicker plugin. Considering how much you get, it’s fairly lightweight and measures about 7KB when minified. This runs on top of jQuery, so you must also consider that. But it’s one of the few plugins that offer gorgeous theming for calendar date selection screens.

It has a few pre-designed templates but also has CSS properties that you can restyle yourself. Not to mention all the JS functions have callbacks, so if you’re comfortable with coding, you can add your own features into the mix.

7. Wickedpicker

While this isn’t technically a date picker, it is one of the better time pickers out there. Wickedpicker is a jQuery-powered time selection plugin that works on any input field. It supports user input for hours/minutes and the AM/PM setting. You can also run it on a 24h clock with a simple JS option.

Some date picker plugins have time selection, but it comes as an extra feature. This plugin is designed solely for time inputs, so it’s a nice choice if that’s all you need.

8. Bootstrap Datepicker

Anyone familiar with Bootstrap knows just how useful it is for new projects. If you’re frequently designing sites on Bootstrap, then you should keep this Bootstrap Datepicker saved.

The design includes a section for changing the month & year along with a time selector for altering minutes/hours in your date picker. It blends perfectly into the BS GUI, so it’s undoubtedly a staple for anyone using Bootstrap.

9. Foundation Datepicker

Another popular frontend framework is Foundation, and if you’re more into that library, you should check out this Foundation datepicker also 100% free. It also comes with a time picker and options to include the time inside the date selection screen. You can even define dates based on fixed settings(i.e., only certain dates are available) and limit those dates to certain times.

You can even restyle the time input with fixed choices like 15-minute intervals. You can do a lot with this plugin, so it’s a great addition to any Foundation website.

10. FoxRunSoftware DatePicker

This is one of the top plugins on GitHub for jQuery date pickers. It’s simply titled “DatePicker” but to distinguish it from the rest, it’s the plugin designed by FoxRunSoftware.

It comes with a clean interface, and by default, it uses a 3-month GUI window for date selection. This feels just like the Google Analytics picker, except it’s a bit smaller. The callbacks are pretty simple to code, and you have a lot of control over how to manage the UX. Certainly a date picker worth saving if you want to replicate the Analytics GUI.

11. jQ Datepicker

Here’s one more date picker plugin with the simple title of Datepicker. Again it runs on jQuery, but this one’s designed by a Chinese developer Fengyuan Chen. This Datepicker plugin is phenomenal, and it has a ton of documentation for newer JS developers.

The main demo page is great for toying around, but check out the GitHub repo if you want to get this plugin setup & running on your website.

And if you’re ever looking for more date-picker plugins, try searching GitHub. Web developers release new plugins all the time, so you never know what you’ll find.

The post 10 Free Open-Source Date Picker JavaScript Plugins appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

In addition to typography control, the collection also features several jQuery plugins for animating your text, controlling responsive type, and recreating some fantastic text effects that are typically only achievable using motion editors.

Whether you’re looking to add subtle typography effects or create complex text animations, these plugins provide a wide range of options to help you achieve your design goals. With their intuitive interfaces and robust feature sets, these jQuery plugins are valuable resources for developers and designers looking to enhance the visual appeal of their web typography.

FlowType.JS

FlowType.js lets you configure font-size and line-height ratios of your typography, helping you improve their overall appeal. You can also specify maximum and minimum width thresholds to control FlowType.js.

Squishy

Squishy is a useful plugin that will automatically resize your text to fit precisely into the container (with no extra work on your part). It comes with a series of options so that you can control the “squishiness”: maxSize, minSize, maxWidth, and minWidth.

slabText

slabText is a plugin that will help you create those big, bold, and responsive headlines that are very popular at the moment. The script splits your headlines into rows and then resizes each row to fill the available horizontal space.

FitText

Similar in functionality to Squishy above, FitText will allow you to have scalable headlines on your responsive layout that will fill the width of the parent element.

TypeButter

TypeButter allows you to set optical kerning for any font on your website. It comes packaged with Arial, Georgia, Helvetica, Times, and Verdana, but if you need another font, you can add your own.

Hatchshow

Animated Typography Plugins

Textillate.js

Textillate.js is a fantastic plugin for applying amazing CSS3 animations to any block of text. You will also need lettering.js and animate.css to use this plugin.

funnyText.js

funnyText.js is a plugin that will allow you to create “funny and crazy moving” typography very quickly.

Lettering.js

Lettering.js, similar in functionality to funnyText.js above, is a jQuery plugin that gives you complete down-to-the-letter control of your web type.

Jumble

Jumble is a plugin that will animate and “jumble” up the colors of your text headers. Choose a color range and set parameters for whether the shuffle is based on brightness or saturation hue.

Wrapping Text Plugins

CircleType.js

CircleType.js is a plugin for setting type around a circle.

jQSlickWrap

jQSlickWrap is a plugin that allows you to quickly and accurately wrap your text around the content of floated images.

Text Effects Plugins

No Vacancy

The simple novacancy.js plugin will give your text a fantastic text neon golden effect.

Flipping Text

Antiquify.js

This unique plugin will ‘antiquify’ your text. Randomly applied aberrations make text look like it came straight off an old, antique printing press.

…and finally…

jQuery Typography Troll

Typography Troll offers an easy way to confuse readers who try to distinguish which of several similar fonts you’re using (like Helvetica and Arial) by randomly assigning a font family to each character in the selected text.

The post 20 Free jQuery Typography & Text Effect Plugins appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

However, you might want to consider taking it a step further and restyling them to better match your website’s design.

Thankfully, there are many free JavaScript plugins available that allow you to customize the look and feel of your progress bars. These plugins offer a variety of extra features, such as animations and more advanced design options, to help make your progress bars more engaging and visually appealing.

With the plugins below, you can easily create progress bars that seamlessly integrate into your website’s design and add extra polish to your user interface.

1. LineProgressbar

The jQuery LineProgressbar is a free plugin that’s super thin and lightweight. It works with any modern progress bar elements and takes basic options for total fill length, bar color, and height/width(among other features).

Check out the demo page for some examples and code snippets you can use on your website. This is probably the best progress bar plugin for anyone willing to use jQuery. It’s easy to work with, and it’ll run in all major browsers.

2. MProgress.js

Another simple option I really like is MProgress.js. This is built around Google’s material design style, so you may notice it closely resembles some of Google’s loading bars.

It comes with four different loading bars and four different animation styles. They’re all visible on the main page, so you can see which might fit your website. Super easy and super lightweight. What more could you ask for?

3. ProgressBar.js

We’ve all seen the progress bars that run across the top of a webpage. These are getting much more common, and they’re typically used for dynamically-loaded pages.

ProgressBar.js is a free plugin that replicates this feature. But it doesn’t just rely on bars at the top of the page. You can use this plugin for any custom shape, from circles to triangles and custom parallelograms.

4. goalProgress

The goalProgress plugin is definitely the simplest of the bunch. It’s primarily meant for use in tracking numbers on an input field, but it can be used for any similar progress bar. You won’t find much on the homepage besides a basic demo featuring a charity donation bar.

There’s far more info on the GitHub repo showing what this does and how to get it setup. I’d recommend this as a simple starting point for basic progress animations. For anything else, check out some of the other plugins here.

5. μProgress

I had never heard of μProgress before researching for this article. Yet it’s one of the best progress bar plugins on the web. This was developed as a performant progress bar with a focus on custom animations. They all run on the computer’s GPU, which frees up tasks for other page elements to render faster.

You can read a lot more about this process and find setup details in the documentation. It’s a cool project with a full plugin API for adding custom features too.

6. nanobar.js

If you’re looking for a pure vanilla JavaScript progress plugin, look no further. With nanobar.js, you get a super small JS library built around progress bar animations. The whole thing measures under 700 bytes when gzipped, so it’s very small.

Check out the homepage for some examples with bars embedded in the page along with a top loading bar fixed to the full browser width. It can run on just a single function call which makes this perfect for non-JS coders as well as devs who staunchly oppose using jQuery.

7. progressStep

The majority of progress bars fill up a percentage or a number counter. But progressStep is different. This jQuery plugin lets you develop a breadcrumb progress bar where the user works through different steps in a pre-defined process.

This process might be signing up for a new account on a website or following e-commerce checkout flow. Either way, this is an excellent plugin for adding that kind of functionality to your site. It’s free to use and has some great documentation on the GitHub repo.

8. jQuery Circle Progress

Here’s a very similar plugin also built on the jQuery library. But with the jQuery Circle Progress plugin you get more variety to pick through. There are more custom themes and more options to work with.

The downside? It can weigh a bit more, so it’s not the best solution for every project.

And no matter what you need, I’d guarantee one of these plugins can help save you time and frustration to avoid coding a progress bar from scratch.

The post 9 Free Progress Bar JavaScript Plugins For Web Designers appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.