How to skin HTML form elements in seconds

In the past weeks I received some requests from my readers which asked to me to suggest a simple way to skin HTML form elements. There are a lot of ways to do that and a lot of posts with interesting resources about this topic. But if you want to save time and obtain a nice result I suggest you to use jqTransform or NiceForms.


Both scripts are very useful and simple to use. If you want to use a "native" script which doesn't use an external JS framework (such as jQuery or MooTools) I think a good choice is NiceForms otwerwise, if you use jQuery, a good alternative is jqTransform. Take a look how they work.

1. jqTransform
jqTransform is a jQuery styling plugin wich allows you to skin quickly form elements in a very easy way. The only thing you have to do is to add a javascript inclusion to this plugin in the header section of your web page, create your form and add two lines of JS code to apply the transformation to your form.

Use this code to add a javascript inclusion to jqTransform:

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.jqtransform.min.js">
</script>

...now create a form with class property equal to jqTransform:

<form class="jqTransform">
<!-- Add form elements here... -->
<form>

...then add this JS code to apply the transformation:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
$("form.jqtransform").jqTransform();
});
</script>

2. NiceForms
Niceforms is a script that will replace the most commonly used form elements with custom designed ones. You can either use the default theme that is provided or you can even develop your own look with minimal effort.

To implement form style transformation you have to add a javascript inclusion to NiceForms in your web page using this code:

<script type="text/javascript" src="niceforms.js">
</script>

...then create a form with class property equal to niceform:

<form class="niceform">
<!-- Add form elements here... -->
<form>

It's all. Really simple and fast!

Any suggestion? Please leave a comment.