Jquery Mobile Form - Radio buttons

    Radio buttons - popularly used in forms for single option selection, pose a problem in the mobile web world! The radio buttons being so small as they are, reduce the touch area and it becomes really difficult for selection. Jquery Mobile styles these radio buttons in such a way that they become touch friendly and gel with their overall framework design. Jquery Mobile styles the label for the radio buttons so that they are larger and clickable. A custom set of icons to represent the radio button is added to provide additional visual feedback.

    The radio buttons can be used singularly or in a vertical group or can be even grouped horizontally. These radio buttons can be used along with data-mini="true" too, which renders the radio buttons in a smaller size. We will take a look at all this in the example that follows.


    In the first implementation you will see, 3 singular radio buttons which are not attached to each other like in the second implementation. These 2 implementations differ by the usage of the "fieldset" and the data-role="controlgroup". Adding the fieldset with data-role="controlgroup" around the input tags will group the radio buttons together giving them the right visual grouping. Using the data-mini="true" attribute with fieldset will render smaller sized radio buttons as seen in the third implementation.

    In the next implementation, we have the label and the radio buttons control group aligned next to each other. To achieve this you need to wrap your fieldset with dat-role="controlgroup" within a div with data-role="fieldcontain". All of these 4 implementation have a vertical grouping of radio buttons.

    In the next and final implementation of radio buttons we will see how to create a horizontal set of radio buttons. This again is pretty simple like all the above implementations. You need to create a fieldset with data-role="controlgroup" and another data attribute data-type="horizontal". This data-tupe attribute will inform JQM to render the radio buttons in a horizontal group.

    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.

    Hope this post has been informative to you and helps you use radio buttons 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 and Jquery Mobile form elements. Share the post if is has helped you, so that maximum developers benefit from this one.

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