jQuery UI Themeroller support

[aensley]

I had opened this issue on elclanrs/jq-idealforms-old#128 and wanted to make sure it didn't get lost in the shuffle. Love the new version!

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Something that I think would make idealforms better is jQuery UI Themeroller support. Our web app uses jQuery UI extensively to provide a consistent look and feel. We also provide users with the ability to switch between several themes to adjust it to their taste. In its current state, this causes idealforms to be inconsistent with everything else in our web app.

Adding support for standard jQuery UI themes would make this plugin even more robust and flexible. It would eliminate the need for many styles that are currently in the code, including custom styles for the datepicker, which would make idealforms much lighter to download and handle in the browser.

For reference: the jQuery UI Theming API.

I know you've spent a lot of time creating the current styles, and they look great! But I think this change would benefit idealforms and its users.

Thank you!

[elclanrs]

Thanks for your kind comments.

I understand your point and how this could benefit many users using jQuery UI. Ideal Forms 3 is much more flexible in terms of markup and styles; this is one of the main reasons of the major overhaul. Supporting a particular framework such as jQuery UI, or Bootstrap (another common request), is that is hard to maintain, and keep in sync (for one person anyway).

I have thought of adding support for such frameworks, but they're not universal, and new ones appear everyday. The new custom markup, extensions and theme configuration aim to solve this problem by letting the developer adjust Ideal Forms to their needs and make it fit in a particular setup.

If somebody is interested enough in creating an extension to support jQuery UI styles, or Bootstrap I'd be happy to feature it on the project's home page. I think the new third-party extensions offer enough flexibility to do this. In this case it would be mostly CSS style overrides, and maybe wrap inputs in markup or add classes to them.

including custom styles for the datepicker, which would make idealforms much lighter to download and handle in the browser.

The datepicker.styl file isn't that big, ~1K only.

One thing that bothers me about jQuery UI is the checkboxes and radio as buttons. In my opinion the classic checkbox and radio offer better usability (and familiarity). The custom inputs in Ideal Forms can be styled easily though. The custom select is not included anymore but a new simple replacement is being maintained as jquery.idealselect.

[aensley]

Thanks for your response. It's good to see that we might be able to do it ourselves with a plugin. We will definitely travel that route. If we are successful, we will make it openly available so that other users might benefit.

I agree on the radios, checkboxes, and selects. I love that the select is no longer a custom control in version 3. I think that is much better for usability.

The datepicker.styl file isn't that big, ~1K only.

I must have been looking at something else when I opened the original issue.