If you ran across this, you are probably familiar with JQuery and are more than likely a Microsoft .NET Developer. Below you will find some of my favorite and most useful plugins that are easy to use / implement in an ASP.NET site. Note these plugins are not designed specifically for use with .NET they are just the ones I find extremely useful.
Please leave any comments 0n jquery plugins that you find useful!
JQuery UI
Okay, so it is not exactly a plugin, more a set of plugins; however, I find many useful things in the UI library. Specifically Tabs, Sortable, and DatePicker are the ones i use the most. Date picker is clean and functional – not to mention it is easier to implement than the ASP.NET AJAX DatePicker.
Website: http://jqueryui.com
jTemplates
This one is very useful if you are making AJAX calls to retrieve tables of data (see my post on retrieving data from .NET Web Services). Instead of generating your html in your javascript where it is hard to read and definitely hard to update and maintain you can generate a simple HTML template to format your JSON data. For more details and examples using jTemplates check out their plugin page.
Website: http://plugins.jquery.com/project/jTemplates
Validation
You should always perform validation at the server level; however, it does wonders to be able to tell a user of your site that they did not fill out a form properly without doing a postback. Yes, I know you can use asp validators such as requiredfieldvalidator but I feel that every time I take that route, I end up writing a ton of markup just to make sure a field is not empty. This is where the jQuery validation plugin comes into play it has features to check for dates, credit cards, emails and more! It even makes it really easy to attach your own validation. There are some tips and tricks you should know about when using validation with ASP.NET especially in master pages.
Website: http://bassistance.de/jquery-plugins/jquery-plugin-validation/
Masked Input
This is a simple yet very useful plugin. Ever want to limit a textbox to numbers only or specify a format for the input? Well masked input makes it easy check out their site for demos.
Website: http://digitalbush.com/projects/masked-input-plugin/
QuickSearch
This plugin allows you to search text in a DOM element such as an ordered/unordered list or a table. This is one I haven't played with too much. I’m not sure how efficient it is with different sizes of datasets, though I suspect it gets slower with large amounts of data. To use it you just attach it to a table or list element and it will filter your data as you type.
Website: http://rikrikrik.com/jquery/quicksearch/
ASP.NET
jquery, ajax