Recently while working on a client project I was met with a situation in which I needed to do some client-side feedback to validation of a couple fields. I wanted something a little more spiced up than your typical turn-the-field-red or put-a-red-asterisk next to it.

The jQuery UI Effects library had just what I was looking for, with only one problem. In order to use the desired effect I had to include over 100 kb of additional Javascript. My app was already pretty heavy on the client side so I sought a way to achieve the effect with as little cruft as possible.

So, after a little hacking around, I present the “Mini” UI Effects plugins. They are a set of plugins that are lightweight and attempt to offer a similar experience to the jQuery UI effects. For now there are just three basic effects, “Blink”, “Wiggle” and “Bob.” They are similar to the jQuery UI “Pulsate”, “Shake” and “Bounce” effects respectively.

Please feel free to download and use them in your own projects both commercial and personal alike. They have been tested to work in IE6+, Safari and Firefox.

Check out a demo and download the jQuery Mini UI plugins here. Let me encourage you to leave feedback in the comments. We’d love to hear of any experience using them (bugs or otherwise). Enjoy.