10 jQuery Plugins to Enhance your User Interfaces

With a recently estimated over 20 million websites currently using jQuery it is essential to know what jQuery plugins there are out there in order to stay with the web design trend. Today, we’ll put some focus on some popular jQuery user interface plugins to help you enhance your current website to stay ahead of the crowd!

jQuery Image Parallax

Ever wanted an animated header but refused to put Flash on your website? Well, there is now a jQuery plugin which allows you to do just that with, you guessed it – zero Flash! It creates an overlay of images and animates them when your mouse hovers the header. Get that WOW factor with jQuery Parallax.

jQuery News Ticker

Ever wanted to display the latest news on your website in a sort of “headline news” way. Well, this jQuery News Ticker plugin will not only display your latest news it can also be loaded in from an RSS feed. This would allow you to display news from any website which has an RSS feed. Pretty cool!

jQuery Letterings

This awesome little jQuery plugin creates eye catching fonts, typical called web typography! It’s lightweight, easy to use and can really transform that ugly looking heading you’ve always hated into something quite spectacular. There is also a CSS3 fall back for those people who might (for some unknown reason) have JavaScript disabled.

jQuery Stylesheet Switcher

Designing a web page and can’t decide what styles to choose for a client? Well, this little jQuery plugin lets you switch stylesheets instantly with just a click of a link! Now you can switch back and forth when showing choosing designs with clients.

jQuery Page Peel

This little jQuery plugin which does exactly what it says on the tin – creates a page peel! This is a little page animation which sits at the top right hand of the screen and when the mouse hovers it the page “peels” down and reveals the content behind it. It could be used to display a popular area or feature of your website but is most commonly known these days to display advertisements. Let’s face it the page peel grabs your attention straight away!

jQuery Simple Modal

Lets face it, alert boxes which display things like “Wrong password” or “Saved.” are outdated! Well fortunately these days are over and there a few good jQuery plugins out there that manage modal boxes. These modal boxes are essentially windows which can be style customized to suit your website! The simple modal is my favorite as it’s so easy to implement and manage.

jQuery Scroll Slider

Ever wanted to grab someones attention when they are reaching the end of a web page, essentially to keep them from closing it? Well, with the jQuery Related web pages Scroll Slider you can do just that! As the visitor reaches the end of the page a sliding animation with slides out from the bottom right of the screen! Great Stuff!

jQuery Position Absolute

This nifty little jQuery plugin can make products fit on screen creating an interesting way of displaying them so that they are all visible. Now your days of reducing the size of your images to small thumbnails are over with this fantastic jQuery plugin.

jQuery Easy UI

This awesome jQuery plugin allows you to create amazing professional looking websites with ease. There are a whole range of demos of the different types of components to get you started. I have noticed it can be particularly useful for displaying data in tables using a DataGrid layout. It is very easy and yet so powerful!

jQuery iFrame/textArea Resizer

OK so you are using an iFrame to display a web page, form or images on your web page. iFrames usually have a fixed height and are a pain to resize across the different browsers. This little jQuery plugin allows you to resize iFrames and textAreas on your page with a nice grip bar, hassle free!