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JQWidgets VS jQuery UI

Compare JQWidgets VS jQuery UI and see what are their differences

JQWidgets logo JQWidgets

Unique toolkit for HTML5 Web development

jQuery UI logo jQuery UI

Curated set of user interface interactions, effects, widgets, and themes built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library
  • JQWidgets Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-05-01
  • jQuery UI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-17

JQWidgets features and specs

  • Comprehensive Component Library
    JQWidgets offers a wide range of UI components that are suitable for building complex web applications, providing developers with many options to create feature-rich applications.
  • Ease of Integration
    The library integrates smoothly with popular frameworks such as Angular, React, and Vue, which helps developers seamlessly incorporate JQWidgets into existing projects.
  • Cross-Browser Compatibility
    JQWidgets supports all major browsers, ensuring consistent functionality and appearance across different platforms and devices.
  • Detailed Documentation
    The library comes with extensive documentation, tutorials, and examples, making it easier for developers to get started and understand various components.
  • Regular Updates
    JQWidgets has frequent updates and feature additions, which helps developers stay up-to-date with the latest web development trends and technologies.

Possible disadvantages of JQWidgets

  • Licensing Cost
    Some features and components of JQWidgets come under a commercial license, which might not be suitable for budget-conscious projects or individual developers.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its comprehensive documentation, developers new to JQWidgets might face a learning curve, especially if they are unfamiliar with more advanced UI components.
  • Overhead
    Using a comprehensive UI library can sometimes lead to increased file sizes and loading times, which can be a concern for performance-sensitive applications.
  • Customization Complexity
    While JQWidgets offers many features, customizing components beyond their default settings can sometimes be complex and might require deep dives into the library's internals.
  • Dependency Management
    Integrating JQWidgets into a project can add additional dependencies that need to be managed, potentially complicating the build and deployment processes.

jQuery UI features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    jQuery UI simplifies creating and managing complex UI components with straightforward syntax and comprehensive documentation.
  • Compatibility
    jQuery UI is highly compatible with older browsers, offering a broader range of support compared to more modern frameworks.
  • Extensibility
    jQuery UI is designed to be modular and extendable, allowing developers to use only the components they need and easily extend or theming them.
  • Rich Set of Widgets
    It comes with a variety of pre-built widgets such as datepickers, accordions, and sliders, which can save development time.
  • Animated Effects
    jQuery UI includes many built-in animation effects that can enhance the user experience without requiring additional libraries.
  • Theming
    The library provides Themeroller, a tool that allows developers to create custom themes easily, ensuring UI consistency and branding.

Possible disadvantages of jQuery UI

  • Performance
    Due to its extensive feature set, jQuery UI can be relatively heavy, which may affect performance, particularly in resource-constrained environments.
  • Not Mobile-First
    jQuery UI is not designed with mobile-first principles in mind, making it less optimal for modern responsive web applications.
  • Learning Curve
    While easy to use for simple tasks, mastering jQuery UI for more complex applications may require a significant learning curve.
  • Dependency on jQuery
    Since jQuery UI relies on the jQuery library, it adds an additional dependency which can be limiting if you prefer or are required to use vanilla JS or another library.
  • Declining Popularity
    With the rise of modern frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular, jQuery UI has seen a decline in popularity and community support.
  • Limited Modern Features
    Compared to contemporary UI libraries, jQuery UI lacks some of the modern features and performance optimizations found in newer libraries.

Analysis of jQuery UI

Overall verdict

  • jQuery UI is a solid choice for projects that already use jQuery or for developers who need to implement standard UI components quickly and easily. However, for projects starting from scratch, considering more modern alternatives that align with the current state of JavaScript development, such as React, Vue, or Angular, might be beneficial due to their extensive ecosystems and support for modern development patterns.

Why this product is good

  • jQuery UI is a popular library that extends the capabilities of jQuery with a robust set of user interface interactions, effects, widgets, and themes. It is particularly well-suited for developers who are already familiar with jQuery and need to implement features quickly without starting from scratch. Its components are widely used because they are both customizable and reliable, and it is backed by a large community that offers support and contributions. Furthermore, jQuery UI simplifies complex interactions and effects that would otherwise require significant effort to code manually, especially for those who seek cross-browser compatibility.

Recommended for

    jQuery UI is recommended for developers working on legacy projects that heavily rely on jQuery, or for quick, short-to-medium-term projects where ease of use and speed of implementation are paramount. It is also suitable for educational purposes, helping beginners understand DOM manipulation and UI interaction concepts. However, for new projects aimed at creating highly interactive and scalable applications, a framework or library that supports modern front-end technologies may be more appropriate.

JQWidgets videos

Tutorial: Angular CLI & jqwidgets-ng

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How to create jQWidgets web application by IINN STUDIO

jQuery UI videos

jQuery UI tutorial: Adding a user interface with jQuery UI | lynda.com

More videos:

  • Review - jQuery UI Ultimate:Design Amazing Interfaces Using jQuery UI : Understanding the curriculum.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to JQWidgets and jQuery UI)
Javascript UI Libraries
10 10%
90% 90
JavaScript Framework
32 32%
68% 68
Development Tools
4 4%
96% 96
Libraries And Widgets
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, jQuery UI seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 15 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

JQWidgets mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of JQWidgets yet. Tracking of JQWidgets recommendations started around Mar 2021.

jQuery UI mentions (15)

  • Let Me Talk About Component-based Front-end Development
    The once popular jQuery, with its strengths fully utilized in jQuery UI and Bootstrap, provides many UI components and is also friendly to backend developers, seemingly meeting the requirements. However, looking at their component implementation and resource loading forms—. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • 100+ Must-Have Web Development Resources
    jQuery UI: An open-source library for building user interfaces based on jQuery. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • What is a component library and should you build your own?
    Fortunately, when I started web development in earnest, many of these issues were ironed out. By this point, there were still a handful of libraries that made writing complex interfaces with cross-browser support a little easier. Jquery UI, the first component library I used, supported accordions and other widgets. But the browser is constantly evolving, and we now have a native way of implementing this accordion... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Best ReactJS library for Drag-n-Drop Table for plugin Admin view?
    Because WordPress is already have these jQuery & jQuery UI libraries (https://jqueryui.com/). Source: about 2 years ago
  • jQuery 3.6.2 Released
    We still use jQuery + jQuery UI on our website because it is basically battle tested through 15+ years. https://jqueryui.com/ It is easy as hell. What's there to not like? I don't care to be called names or being old fashioned. I also don't care about "right" tooling for frontend. As far it works and it is robust and it is going to be around for many years, I am fine with it. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing JQWidgets and jQuery UI, you can also consider the following products

w2ui - W2UI is a small JavaScript UI library with a complete set of widgets: layout, grid, sidebar, toolbar, tabs, fields, popup, utilities.

jQuery - The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library.

Preact.js - Preact is a fast 3kB alternative to React with the same modern API. Components & Virtual DOM.

React Native - A framework for building native apps with React

Glimmer - Fast and light-weight UI components for the web

Composer - Composer is a tool for dependency management in PHP.