Okay, so Easter is right around the corner and I didn’t want to spend hours building the extra 3 services we will have by hand so that check-in can work. Not to mention losing all my excess fingernail during the day praying I did everything correctly. I decided I wanted something snazzy and easy to use, so I dug into the jQuery UI kit and began building up a new Arena Module based on that. Right now it is a working demo (you can drag and drop to build the service, but there is no submit button to do anything yet).

In the process, I have learned a lot about jQuery and it’s UI kit – and how incredibly easy and powerful it is!  Yes, the jQuery UI is pretty big, but I don’t expect this module to be used outside of staff for internal use. Since Arena is (generally) hosted on-site, bandwidth shouldn’t be an issue. And it is a seldom used module (meaning people aren’t using it a dozen times a day) so if it takes a few seconds to load due to the JavaScript, then oh well.

But I must say, I would like to make more of my modules make use of jQuery and especially the UI goodies. I dabbled in the past with the UI for our main website, but it was only “quick we need this done now find something that will work” so I didn’t have much time to really play with it. This time, I was able to spend all day learning it and seeing how it works. I can see why so many websites are jumping on the AJAX + jQuery (UI) system. It really makes things like Webmail work so much better when you don’t have to postback every time you click on something.