Update jQuery UI Widget Options

By  on  

We're all used to passing options when instantiating an object, whether it be JavaScript or any other language.  Whether or not you can update those options later is usually up to the framework, and somehow many wont let you update them once they've been passed in.  Depending on how the initialization of the object is done, sometimes that makes sense, but in most cases you should be able to update an option at any given time.

I recently needed to update a jQuery UI widget option and here's how you update any given option:

this.$editor.inlineEditor('option', 'forceOpen', true);

jQuery UI is mostly a legacy technology these days so I'm mostly passing this tip on for those having to maintain old code.  This does teach a good lesson:  always provide a method for modifying initial options, even if you don't foresee a reason to do so!

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS @supports

    Feature detection via JavaScript is a client side best practice and for all the right reasons, but unfortunately that same functionality hasn't been available within CSS.  What we end up doing is repeating the same properties multiple times with each browser prefix.  Yuck.  Another thing we...

  • By
    CSS Gradients

    With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements.  CSS gradients are another step in that direction.  Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    WebKit Marquee CSS:  Bringin’ Sexy Back

    We all joke about the days of Web yesteryear.  You remember them:  stupid animated GIFs (flames and "coming soon" images, most notably), lame counters, guestbooks, applets, etc.  Another "feature" we thought we had gotten rid of was the marquee.  The marquee was a rudimentary, javascript-like...

  • By
    CSS Sprites

    The idea of CSS sprites is pretty genius. For those of you who don't know the idea of a sprite, a sprite is basically multiple graphics compiled into one image. The advantages of using sprites are: Fewer images for the browser to download, which means...

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!