I am just trying to streamline my MVC3 development approach. I use Razor in the View and was wondering what the recommendation is for easily creating more fancy UI widgets such as Menus. I would hope I could leverage some good open source components and plug them in. I do subscribe to a good 3rd party component library, but wonder whether this type of feature is best implemented via JQuery UI or old style HTML/CSS?
Many thanks.
In general, Stack Overflow isn’t here to recommend tools for you. However, I will say that whether to choose a javascript tool or straight html/css depends on the needs.
It’s best to work with the simplest solution that solves your problem. CSS can do menus quite well, and straight CSS menus are often the best choice. However, if you need things straight css can’t do, then you need to add javascript. For instance, one problem with CSS menus is that it’s very easy to “roll off” the menu and have it disappear from under your pointer. Most javascript menus add a delay that allows you to roll off for a second and get back before the menu disappears. This improves usability.
Even lots of fancy effects can be done strictly in CSS, but as with many such things.. it won’t be compatible across all browsers, which is again where javascript comes into play. Sometimes the only way to be compatible across the board is with js (at least without losing functionality).