Part 4. Other extensions

There are still several extension points provided by jQuery that need covering; this part collects them together.

jQuery can automatically animate simple numeric values, but more complex or multivalued properties are beyond it. In chapter 11 you’ll see how to add animation capabilities for these other property values, enabling you to incorporate them into your existing animations.

The use of Ajax to retrieve remote content and process it without requiring a full page refresh is well supported by jQuery. Chapter 12 shows how you can hook into the Ajax processing to enhance the built-in capabilities, from preprocessing a request, through providing an alternate retrieval mechanism, to converting returned data into a more useful format.

Event handling is another aspect of web development that jQuery simplifies by providing cross-browser consistency. The special events framework of jQuery described in chapter 13 lets you augment the event handling process to add new events or alter how existing events are dealt with.

Finally, chapter 14 discusses adding new validation rules for use with the Validation plugin. Although not a part of jQuery itself, this plugin is commonly used and provides its own extension point.