I've just released an update for our free jQuery system plugin for Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.7 which has a very nifty new feature. You can now automatically add javascript to the bottom of your Joomla site simply by uploading your files to the plg_jblibrary/user folder media folder.

If you have used any of our Joomla templates before, you may know that I am a massive fan of using jQuery. One of the things that we use it for is to equalise the height of certain divs so as to make certain design elements more uniform on the page.

As an example, in the powerplay Joomla template we use it to make the grid modules below the slideshow the same height regardless of your content on the front page. This makes it easier to have dynamic content there but still maintain the vertical separators between the module positions.

jQuery as you are probably aware is sometimes billed as javascript for designers. I don't pretend to be a javascript expert by any means, but what I love about jQuery is that it's possible to cobble together some simple code that will work around some design constraint without needing to have an indepth working knowledge of core javascript principles. Seasoned developers may take issue with this but ultimately I think it encourages people to use javascript first and then slowly begin to learn the deeper foundations of its logic.

I've used fixed elements in some of our templates (most notably the Insideout Joomla template) and you will notice I've attached position: fixed to the left sidebar on this blog as well.  One of the limitations of the fixed elements is that they often don't play well with small screen resolutions and so this is where jQuery comes in.

Our free jQuery JB LIbrary plugin is looking like getting  major release later this week or early next week. One of the things that gets in the way of using jQuery within Joomla is that there are often issues with multiple instances of the jQuery library loading on the page. These extra versions of the library get loaded via modules and major components alike (community builder and jomsocial both load the jquery library).

Our aim with this plugin is to replace the need for other Joomal extensions to load jQuery. While I've written about our reasons for doing this before I thought I would highlight the changes and updates to JB Library that will add more flexibility and hopefully work with greater compatibility with components that do not have an option to switch the loading of the jQuery library off.

We recently released a new version of our JB LIbrary plugin that adds the ability for lazyload to target specific content on your page. One main complaint we have had since implementing Lazy Load on this site is that it tends to really mess with forums due to the number of avatars and other images that might be on the page. The latest version allows us to specifically target the html markup in our articles to avoid this affect from occurring on the forum.

If you are unfamiliar with Lazy Load you can see it in action on this page by scrolling to the bottom of the page and if you are quick enough you will notice that the images fade in. Using Lazy Load means that each page load will be faster since the browser doesnt have to wait for each image to load on the page.

Lazy Load comes bundled with our free jQuery plugin for Joomla called JB LIbrary and you can visit the Lazy Load home page for more information.