jqTransform - Introduction

jQuery plugin - jqTransform

Introduction

jqTransform is a jQuery plugin created by DFC Engineering which can beautify form input elements.

Visit author website http://www.dfc-e.com/metiers/multimedia/opensource/jqtransform/ to have a first glance of the demo of this plugin, and the github here https://github.com/jcamenisch/jqTransform. 

However, sadly, according to the github, this jqTransform project has been abandoned. The highlighted point is 

Also, most of us have used it only for styling of select elements, and paid no attention at all to the rest of the code.

jqTransform is under GPL License which means we developers can modify jqTransform and use it freely.

Programming Principal 

The principal of jqTransform is easy enough to understand and the source code are clean and readable. 

For a certain element going to be styling by jqTransform, the plugin add a wrapper surrounding the input element and let the wrapper apply CSS with pre-written in .css file.

When it comes to CSS styling, it concerns about cross-browser problem in which most of the CSS problem is done by the author.

Programming Trouble

The source i use the source code version 1.1 from DFC Engineering, the download button is on the left side. 

The version of source code in github may become very combursome and i will not consider to use it or improve base on that github version.

From what i observed, jqTransform works well in older version browser and older jquery. And there is a lot of difference in the IE browsers. 

According to DFC Engineering, jqTransform support "ie 6+, safari 2+, firefox 2+". The part that supporting IE 6+ maybe a bit outdated to the fact that IE 9+ are not released yet. Let alone the notorious distinction in the event flow and box model rendering, the author,at that time, might not perceive that the plugin work poorly in modern browsers.

Moreover, author made more effort in the visible appearance rather than usability of the plugins. Most of the events, e.g. click, change, focus, blur,  are not well implemented on the plugins. 

Improvement

In the coming days, i will try to improve the plugin and make it more developer-friendly.