Skip to main content

Jquery Mobile Form - Text inputs

    In this post on "form text input's" styling and usage using Jquery Mobile we will cover various input types and textarea styling using JQM. We will also cover the various attributes that can be used with the input types. Text inputs and textareas are coded with standard HTML elements, then enhanced by Jquery Mobile to make them more attractive and useable on a mobile device.

    The text input elements are available in 2 flavors/sizes - regular and mini. Following is a standard HTML syntax for an input element.


    Adding a data attribute data-mini="true" to the input tag renders a smaller sized input element. Let's take a look at the code sample below to understand the working in a better way.

    Apart from the regular input type, to accept multi-line input, use the textarea element. The advantage of using textarea in Jquery Mobile is that, the framework auto grows the height of the textarea, avoiding the need for the content in the textarea to be scrolled internally. In the example below, you will see to implementations of textareas - one with label and textarea on 2 separate lines and the other with the label and textarea on the same line.



    In the code above, you will see 4 different implementations of the input element. The first one is a regular input of type text with the label and the textbox one below the other. The second implementation is exactly similar to the first implementation with the only difference of the added data attribute "data-mini="true"" which reduces the size (basically height) of the textbox.

    The third implementation gets the label and the textbox on the same line. This implementation is done using a div with data attribute data-role="fieldcontain" around the label and input tags. This div has to be within a form tag. Maintaining the HTML structure is very important when using JQuery Mobile framework.

    In the fourth implementation, we have used the HTML5 placeholder property and done away with the label completely. However, for the sake of accessibility, we have included the label tag with class="ui-hidden-accessible" so that the label is not displayed but is present in the HTML structure. This implementation is popularly used on mobile sites as this reduces the amount of scroll.

    To disable the input field just add the keyword "disabled" to the input tag and your input type would be disabled.

    A note on accessibility:
    For the sake of accessibility, jQuery Mobile requires that all form elements be paired with a meaningful label. To hide labels in a way that leaves them visible to assistive technologies — for example, when letting an element's placeholder attribute serve as a label — apply the helper class ui-hidden-accessible to the label itself. While the label will no longer be visible, it will be available to assisitive technologies such as screen readers.

     You can use the various input types supported in HTML5. The advantage of using the HTML5 input types is that keybords default to the particular input type are displayed by default. The following example demonstrates the various HTML5 input types that you can use. Try out the example on a mobile device and you will see for yourself the various keyboards that default the particular input type.

    The mobile browsers that do not support the new HTML5 input types will fall back to the default input type="text" and show the default alpha-numeric keyboard. Adding the images (screenshots) of default keyboards displayed for different input types on the Android and iOS devices, to this post would make the post really long and so I have included these images here.

     Hope this post has been informative to you and helps you use the various input types effectively in your next Jquery Mobile based application. Drop a comment to let me know what you feel about this post as well as the earlier series on Jquery Mobile listview. Share the post if is has helped you, so that maximum developers benefit from this one. Till next time, happy coding!

Labels:

Recommended for You

Difference between word-break: break-all versus word-wrap: break-word

The 2 CSS properties word-break: break-all and word-wrap: break-word appear to work in the same way or generate the same output, but there is a slight difference between the 2 and we will be discussing these differences today.



    Take a look at the example above. The difference is quite evident, however I will try to explain it further.

word-break: break-all Irrespective of whether it’s a continuous word or many words, break-all breaks them up at the edge of the width limit even within the characters of the same word
word-wrap: break-word This will wrap long words onto the next line.break-word adjusts different words so that they do not break in the middle.
    So if you have many fixed-size spans which get content dynamically, you might just prefer using word-wrap: break-word, as that way only the continuous words are broken in between, and in case it’s a sentence comprising many words, the spaces are adjusted to get intact words (no break within a word).     In case you want to exp…
Read more

Geodesic, Draggable Onclick Polygon

After creating a simple polygon and then creating an on-click polygon, we will today see how to create a polygon which can be changed, altered, dragged; basically edited on the fly. We will also cover the geodesic polygon in this example itself. If you want to read and understand more about what "geodesic" is, read this post.

    Nothing exceptional about the code that I think needs explanation! You can create a geodesic polygon which can be edited on the fly. Click, hold and drag any marker, and the two polylines connected by this marker will change accordingly. By clicking on the marker, that marker would disappear, and the polygon will reform itself! Here is today's code.


    You can copy the above code in a text file and save it with .html extension. Click on this file; it will open in your default browser and you will see an exciting map in action! The output of the above code appears as seen in the result section above! If you have any doubts or queries regard…
Read more

Onclick polygon

Yesterday we had a look at a simple polygon example. But that example was not exciting as it was all hard-coded with no user interaction and which means no fun! Today's example will deal with creating a polygon on the fly, i.e. an on-click polygon in action!

    The code for creating a polygon is very much similar to creating a polyline! The only difference is that you need to replace "Polyline" by "Polygon" in such examples. Let's head on to our code.


    The output of the above code can be viewed in the result section above. If you have any doubts or queries regarding the above code then please comment here or feel free to drop me a mail! Till then, happy mapping!
Read more

jQuery Mobile's Next Big Step

Spatial Unlimited changes to The UI Dev


After being hosted on blogger 😣 for the last 6 years 📆, this page has finally been moved to Github.io
This means a few things for you, dear reader!

You will be redirected to the new page shortly! ⏩ ⏩ ⏩


Once crapy HTML is now better looking Markdown! 😍 😍


The entire blog is a Github repo! 😍 😍


Spatial Unlimited is now The UI Dev 😍 😍


Read more

Jquery Mobile - Readonly listview

The Jquery Mobile Listview that is used generally used to link each list item to a new page in the application or to link that list item to another list. However, it is not always necessary to have a linked list. Sometime we need to display a list that does not have to be linked to anything else.

    Using Jquery Mobile, we can have non-interactive, read-only listviews in our web pages. This list can be generated using the ordered or un-ordered lists that don't have any linked items, i.e. we basically do not include any anchor tags within our list item tags. This will render the listview as a non-interactive, read-only listview.

    Take a look at the JsFiddle below. The code and the actual result will give you a better picture of how you can implement the non-interactive, read-only listviews.



    Hope you find this example useful. Please drop a comment if you face any problems or have any queries. I would be happy to help and learn more. You can take a look at more examples …
Read more