20+ Uniquely Cool jQuery Plugins and Tutorials
Matthew Corner
jQuery is a fantastic resource with a powerful base of plugins, but we often see roundup’s of the same boring plugins that all do the same thing. Here are 22 plugins that don’t simply do the same thing, but do things differently, and are exciting rather than boring. We hope that these plugins will be handy in your next project.
1. Airport Text Effect
You know those flickering messages you see on boards at airports and train stations? That effect is now at your fingertips with this plugin.
2. Sliding Image Puzzle
Remember those sliding image puzzles you played when you were little? Well now you can make your own in your browser with this clever little plugin.
3. Quickflip
With this plugin, you can mimic the effect of cooly flipping over an element such as an image, or lets say for example, a business card.
4. Spritley
A fantastic plugin to create a truly inspiring sliding header, giving the illusion of flash, without flash itself!
5. JQZoom
Slightly less unique, but still just as cool, this plugin allows you to have preview zoom in fields on an image, just like we’ve seen some major retailers using.
6. Quicksand
Re-order and sort your list items with beautiful transitions with this plugin. Super sleek, and super fast.
7. Spacegallery
This image gallery offers up the feeling of flicking through items in a filing cabinet. You view images one by one, and see the ones behind stacking up.
8. jQuery Heat Map
There are plenty tools for creating heat-maps of your site, but say you want to do it yourself? This will do the trick nicely with it clean simple interface.
9. On-screen Keyboard
We’ve seen on-screen keyboards before, but this thorough tutorial shows you how to craft one for yourself, ready for use in your browser.
10. Curtains Effect
Want to give something the proper screen treatment it deserves? Unveil it with giant curtains using this jQuery tutorial.
11. Sticky Notes
Add draggable, editable stick notes to your website with this fantastic jQuery plugin!
12. Lens Flare
Want to make you’re images more interactive? Then adding a lens flare to your image is a fantastic way to do so. Check out these fantastic demos.
13. Star Rating
Turn a boring set of radio buttons, or select drop down, into a fantastic looking star rating system with great fallback for JavaScript turned off.
14. Parallax
Use Parallax to create a moving image relative to the mouse position where multiple layers move.
15. Jplayer
Allow users to listen to audio on your site with Jplayer which even supports html5!
16. MoaText
Though I can’t really think of a practical application, this plugin lets you manipulate text with your mouse in wave effects and more.
17. Grid Accordion
This is a fantastic tutorial from Chris Coyier at CSS-tricks on making a unique accordion that works as a grid.
18. Form Wizard
Turn normal forms into a step-by-step wizard making your forms more usable and less daunting to users.
19. Lazy
Found yourself with an html head tag overflowing with css and JavaScript resources? Let Lazy fix that for you.
20. Elastic
Elastic is an aptly named plugin that will grow your textarea as you type until you hit the max height defined.
21. UI Layout
UI Layout makes complex layouts with sliding panels, and so on a breeze. The demo speaks for itself on this one.
22. Sliding Boxes and Captions
This great tutorial allows us to get dynamic with how image captions are displayed on images.
Further Discussion
I doubt I’ve found every fantastic unique jQuery plugin out there, so if you know of more, make sure you add them in the comments for others to see as well.
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Yordan
Posted 5 days ago 20I love this collection. Great job and thanks.
wise international nepal
Posted 169 days ago 19nice this is very fantastic information i like it
BY
manpower company in nepal
Anonymous
Posted 439 days ago 18Nice collection thanks.
I just need to find some excuses to use some of these!!
Marc
Posted 504 days ago 17Thanks for this collection. With jquery you can add very cool features and effects to a website. There are always some interesting plugins in your article.
burakg
Posted 587 days ago 15Absolutely nice collection with carefully selected plugins. Thanks for the list
Jay Gilford
Posted 589 days ago 13I have to say I’ve seen all of these plugins before, there are far more exhaustive lists out there (such as those on smashing magazine)
Rebecca
Posted 588 days ago 14Yeh yeh yeh… We are to assume here, Jay Gilford, that being the clever dude you portray yourself to be, you would have not been here dissing the article. Dude, if you like Smashing Mag more… There’s the door! Of course, you might have known that already, right?
Would it kill you to have something positive to say?
Ron
Posted 559 days ago 16Nice list.
When you get a porsche, there is always people that have a picture of a maserati.
Beben
Posted 593 days ago 12its a one good list…
thanks for share mate ^^
Thomas Craig
Posted 593 days ago 11Excellent list Matt, one that I like to use is the form wizard, great for creating forms.
shashank
Posted 593 days ago 10the airport plugin is one of mah favourite one :)
thnx 4 amazing collection !
Ken the tech
Posted 593 days ago 9hey but this list is really great. I will start using a few. And wait the majority is working in IE6 too! Thanks bro!
toribloger
Posted 593 days ago 8very cool jQuery collection! thank you
greynor
Posted 594 days ago 7How about http://coding.mypoo.de/jquery-quicktime-event/ ?
Michael Pehl
Posted 595 days ago 6No new plugins this time? I’ve seen all plugins several times now…
Do something new please
Tom Girling
Posted 595 days ago 5Thanks for that – there are a couple of plugins there that I’ve not seen before….very useful – I’m liking Spritely & Quicksand quite a lot.
gopal bhattacharjee
Posted 595 days ago 4Good jQuery collections Matthew…..I’ll try some plug in add to my next project…
Arafat Hossain Piyada
Posted 595 days ago 3This is probably coolest set of jQueary plugins. I really like ‘Airport Text Effect’ and ‘jQuery Heat Map’, both will help me well.
michael
Posted 595 days ago 2Very cool post.
Claudia Liersch
Posted 595 days ago 1Nice jQuery Collection, thank you!