10 jQuery Plugins to Help with Web Page Layouts
Every now and then a web project will come up that has special and unique layout requirements, and the current capabilities of CSS just aren’t enough. With projects such as these, jQuery can be your best friend. So here are 10 jQuery plugins to help you out with page layouts.
UI.Layout
The UI.Layout plug-in can create any UI look you want – from simple headers or sidebars, to a complex application with toolbars, menus, help-panels, status bars, sub-forms, etc.
mb.containerPlus
This plugin let’s you build full featured and fully skinnable containers. The container can be set to draggable, resizable, collapsable and minimizable.
css-template-layout
The project aims at providing web designers with a way to use the W3′s CSS Template Layout Module today. As a jQuery plug-in, the script parses a given set of CSS rules and displays the content as indicated in the specification. Options include the ability to select the CSS parsed, as well as an optional prefix to use for the CSS rules. Specifying a prefix allows style rules that are interoperable with a possible future browser implementations.
Masonry
Masonry is a layout plugin for jQuery. Think of it as the flip side of CSS floats. Whereas floating arranges elements horizontally then vertically, Masonry arranges elements vertically then horizontally according to a grid. The result minimizes vertical gaps between elements of varying height, just like a mason fitting stones in a wall.
Columnizer
Columnizer will automatically layout your content in newspaper column format. You can specify either column width or a static number of columns.
jQSlickWrap
jQSlickWrap forces text to wrap around the contents of an image, not just its bounding box as it does when you use a float with CSS.
Equal Heights
Equal Heights loops through the top-level child nodes of a specified element and sets their min-height values to that of the tallest.
js-columns
js-columns is designed to help with the creation of newspaper-style column layouts in HTML. While CSS3 has a variety of column-style properties, these are not yet widely implemented, and none help with the creation of page-based layouts.
Columnize
jQuery Columnize allows you to create a newspaper-like column layout.
jLayout
jLayout provides four layout algorithms for laying out HTML elements in web pages. This plugin allows you to lay out your elements with as little code as possible, and behaves correctly when used with margins, padding and borders.
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20 comments
Oles
May 21, 2010Thanks, useful post.
Heather
May 21, 2010These are great – I know of at least two of these that I’ll be trying out immediately. Thanks for the inspiration.
tgpo
May 21, 2010Masonry is very useful! Thanks for the list.
HowToPlaza
May 21, 2010This can really speed up the job of creating awesome-looking layouts.
Santorini
May 21, 2010Very nice list. Thanks, just learning css3
Michael Pehl
May 21, 2010Nice collection. I think I should test some of these plugins
Thanks for sharing!
Jordan Walker
May 21, 2010Why use JavaScript in place of CSS?
ddeja
May 21, 2010Couse sometimes it’s better looking. I think that’s all. You want nice looking page You use CSS, but if You want flash, trendy what ever page You use JavaScript:)
dan
May 24, 2010that’s the stupiest comment i’ve seen in a long time. get a book on progressive enhancement.
Doug Gough
May 25, 2010Yes, I agree. That comment is pretty stupie.
Scott
August 10, 2010Because it’s one line of javascript and 10 minutes work, vs hours of frigging with pages of css, just because css and HTML were not developed with the modern web application in mind. How would it be if all your desktop apps either had a half-filled window, or a scrollbar on the right with half the contents off the page? No thanks.
Jay
December 7, 2011It’s the same mentality that uses Java over C++. Make life easy for the developer and make the end user pay in extra processing every time they use the app.
Marco
May 22, 2010Thank you for sharing, it’s a very useful list!
CSSReX
May 22, 2010Nice List! I am going to try all these one by one
suraj
May 23, 2010very useful plugins for webmasters, thanks for sharing.
Soulsizzle
May 24, 2010I tend to stay away from doing layout with JS, but Masonry rocks. Definitely very useful.
Avinash
May 24, 2010Thanks for sharing !
will give it a try very soon
~Avinash
Stevensst
May 24, 2010great ! thanks for sharing, been looking for some of em for a long time!
richard
October 4, 2010Awesome. I especially like the UI.Layout. Tested the layouts on the fly using htmlinstant.com and they looked good.
Abhishek Saha
October 23, 2011You can also have a look at http://ajaxtown.com
It has a Layout Plugin which can creates 1-2-3 column layouts along with preloading option. easy to implement.