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!

Comments

Recommended for You

ES6 101 - Lexical Declarations Let

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 😍 😍

CSS Text and Font

    In this post today, we will take a look at some of the most interesting CSS text and font properties listed below. text-transform white-space word-break word-spacing word-wrap font-variant Text-transform property:     Let's begin with the text-transform property. The filler text used in all the examples below has been taken from Andy Matthew's filler text generator which is a humorous replacement to the traditional boring lorem ipsum .     The text-transform property will turn your text to uppercase, lowercase and also will capitalize the first character of every word. So now you don't need any javascript to do your bidding. This transformation will be done irrespective of the special characters preceding and following the text characters. The following example will make things much more clear and editable of course =) White-space property:     The next property to explore is the white-space  proper...

ES6 101 - For..of

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 😍 😍

The bitter divorce of PSD and HTML

    Today's article is an interesting post that I read. The original post in Portuguese and authored by Fabricio Teixeira  can be found at arquiteturadeinformacao  (Now don't ask me pronounce this =)).     Some are calling it the death of PSD  but I prefer calling it a "divorce". PSD and HTML are both healthy and living strong, just that they do not live together anymore. "PSD to HTML", which for years was the most accurate and sometimes the only right path to web design process, seems like has its days counted.     Firstly you draw a page in Photoshop; impeccable layout, representing exactly how the web pages would appear when opened in a browser. After a sign-off on this picture (PSD) from the client the front end developer transforms these pictures into HTML, CSS and Javascript. The assets are cut, one by one, exported from the PSD and integrated into the HTML. Plugins and new tools are created in the process and some companies eve...

50000 hits and live examples

    Hello to all the blog readers - to the regulars and the first timers. Spatial Unlimited just crossed the 50,000 all time hits milestone and so its time to celebrate and also mark the occasion with something new and interesting.       The new addition to this blog is that, you will now be able to enjoy the codes live on the blog. I am adding some life to the blog by converting all the earlier life-less codes to JsFiddle powered live examples. I have converted a few and am sharing the links here. Please share your feedback and let me know what you think of the new additions. Hope you keep enjoying the blog as much as I enjoy updating it! Cheers! Links to Live Examples: 1. Simple Google Map 2. Simple Map Marker 3. Multiple Markers 4. KML Layer