What I love about jQuery is how it make coding Javascript much quicker and easier. Switching to jQuery after years of experience in Javascript felt like I was going backwards because of how much easier it is. jQuery is super powerful and now speedier than ever. But it’s greatest feature is the thousands of plug-ins available for it. I’m going to have a look some of the handy jQuery plug-ins I’ve come across.

Web Form Validation

This plug-in is one that I will be using quite often. It takes the hassle out of coding a validation script for your web forms and works with 1 simple line of code. You can easily set which fields are required and what type of field it is in the form via simple meta data in the tag. You can also easily change the look of the error messages via css.

Farbtastic Color Picker

More then just looks, this color picker is so easy to install you feel like you’re cheating! Works brilliantly and puts the hex straight into any input field ready for you to use in your web app.

Flash

This plugin makes adding flash a little bit simpler and can easily handle your version checking for you.

Simple Page Peel

You’ve seen it everywhere, the ugly flash thing in the corner where you rollover it and it peels the page back to reveal some crazy offer. Well here is a jQuery implementation for it but unlike it’s flash brothers its not ugly!

Cookies

Mmmmm, yum! No wait, this is the browser kind. This plugin gives you a simple way to create and delete cookies using Javascript.

Stylesheet Switcher

Speaks for itself, you can easily switch between CSS stylesheets.

Curvy Corners

Want cross browser curves without the hassle of corner images? This is for you. Not as smooth as the CSS3 code but it’ll work across all modern browsers.