25+ jQuery Plugins that enhance and beautify HTML form elements

Introduction

This article will cover the following elements:

• Form Skinning
• Form Validation
• Masking
• File Uploader
• Checkbox & Radio Button
• Spin Button & Slider
• Auto Complete
• Calendar & Time picker
• Drop Down Menu (Select Element)
• Color Picker
• Textarea

Form Skinning

Frustrated with the form elements inconsistency among different browsers? With these jQuery plugins, you can unified the look and feel of all your form elements.

• 
  jQuery jNice
  
• 
  Styling input file
  
• 
  jqTransform
  
• 
  Emblematiq Niceforms
  

Form Validation

It's always good to have client side form validation. These jQuery plugin will save your times and works by reusing already made form validation.

• 
  Form validator
  
• 
  Bassistance jQuery Validation
  
• 
  Live validation
  
• 
  Lightform
  

Masking

Masking can help to avoid human mistake. I found these plugins are very helpful to guide users and decrease the chances of bad data.

• 
  Masked Input Plugin
  
• 
  Meio Mask
  

File Uploader

These file uploader transform the orginal input file element into a more robust file uploader that able to upload multiple files and having a progress bar to indicate the upload progress.

• 
  Multiple File Upload
  
• 
  jqUploader
  
• 
  Uploadify
  

Checkbox & Radio Button

Spice it up your checkbox and radio button with these jQuery plugins!

• 
  Checkbox & Radio Input Replacement
  
• 
  Fancy Form
  
• 
  jQuery Checkbox
  

Spin Button & Slider

Spin button can be useful sometimes. The other alternative will be a slider.

• 
  Spin Button
  
• 
  jQuery UI - Slider
  

Auto Complete

You must have seen the auto complete functionality from Apple.com, google.com and all the major websites. With the following plugins, we, too can implement it in our websites easily.

• 
  Bassistance jQuery Auto Complete
  
• 
  AjaxDaddy jQuery Auto Complete
  

Calendar & Time picker

The old school method to let user select date and time are using drop down lists (day, month and year). Now, we can use a calendar, timepicker to replace the old way. Since it's picked from calendar, it decreases the chances of invalid date. I like them.

• 
  jQuery UI
  
• 
  Time Picker
  

Drop Down Menu (Select Element)

Want to do more with drop down menu? These plugins able to add more capabilities to drop down menu.

• 
  jQuery Image Drop Down
  
• 
  MC Dropdown
  
• 
  Drop down check list
  

Color Picker

If you are building some online tools that involves colours, I guess you will like the following plugins. jQuery based colour pickers!

• 
  jQuery Color Picker
  
• 
  Farbtastic Color Picker
  
• 
  Color Picker
  

Textarea

Sometimes, we get really annoyed when we have to type in message in such a small space (a textarea), and we have to scroll up and down, left and right (sometimes) to read the entire message. Say no more to scrolling! Add this autogrow/resizer capability to textarea to avoid that.

• 
  Autogrow Textarea
  
• 
  Textarea Resizer
  
• 
  jQuery Elastic
  

Conclusion

All the plugins are implemented using jQuery, there are still heaps of them out there. Of course, you might able to find other good stuff which are not made from jQuery. If you wrote jQuery plugin that enhances form, and you think it's really cool. Drop me a comment, I will add it in.

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