New and improved jQuery Style

Written By: Zander at Aug 17, 2009

As some may have read through our Twitter feed, I have been working on an updated version of jQuery Style for over a week now. I wanted to enhance areas, improve the site’s responsiveness and cull any unneeded scripts that slow down the site.

The Homepage

The homepage is now a stream of the the site’s latest content (Gallery, Tutorials, Plugins, Screencasts and blog posts) all rolled into one jumbled grid list. The items are organised by date, newest first and I have used an ingenious jQuery plugin to change the way the items are floated. This plugin is called Masonry by David DeSandro , I urge you to go and check it out if you haven’t already found it.

I have replaced the tooltips (provided by qTip) and replaced them with the much leaner Tipsy. They are a lot more basic but more than adequate for what I need. Check them out as well.

I also included a new site-wide toolbar, provided by Wibiya to streamline the various social aspects of the site. You can connect to our Facebook Page, subscribe to feeds, translate pages, use Twitter and get notifications from us. Go to their site and apply for an invite, they took about 24hrs to send me mine.

Submissions

I have fixed, improved and added to the submission form. You can now submit from throughout the site and submit, not just Gallery items but, Tutorials, Plugins and Screencasts.

Commenting by Disqus

I have removed the old, quite basic commenting system from the site; it was never very good and didn’t inspire people to engage in active discussion about the site’s content (sorry if you commented, your comment is not recoverable, but please comment again if you wish). The new comments are provided by Disqus and enable you to login using a multitude of existing services, making it as painless as possible.

Please comment on the site’s content, if you see something you like, just add a quick comment to let everyone know.

If you think think of anything that might improve the user experience, no matter how small, I would love to hear about it; please leave you comment below.