JQuery UI

What do you like best?

My favorite is probably explode ($( "#toggle" ).toggle( "explode" );) but there are tons of others, and you need it for drag-n-drop, and it has all kinds of other stuff that comes along too like accordions and resize-ability, date-pickers, it gives you everything you'd need for a JavaScript UI.

What do you dislike?

I could probably go for something without the graphical influence, like, for example, drag-n-drop is essential in an application, the button themes you get aren't necessarily essential, so I could probably go for something even lighter than JQuery UI for some projects. It's already a lightweight addition, but yeah, the graphical components seem less essential than the functionality additions.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Basic JQuery gives you lots of stuff, animations, a whole syntax, and easy DOM manipulation. Add JQueryUI, and you get all kinds of features on top of JQuery, like drag-n-drop, more effects, and fancy buttons and GUI elements.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Again I use it for toggle explode, but I need it for JavaScript drag-n-drop. I think you can do it with pure JavaScript but JQueryUI, for how lightweight it is, really streamlines that functionality. Plus, then I can trust John Resig to deal with cross browser compatibility issues, instead of me.