jQuery UI is undergoing an API redesign which will slim down the size of the API in order to provide a more stable codebase that is easier to learn and use. We’ll be posting the proposed changes over the next few weeks in order to gather feedback from the community. Our goal is to support the old (current) and new (proposed) APIs simultaneously in 1.9 and then remove support for the old APIs in 2.0. This post lists out the details of the proposed changes for the Accordion widget along with the reasoning behind each change.
API Redesign
Remove navigation and navigationFilter option.
The navigation-related options are being removed in favor of setting the active option during initialization. The built-in navigation filter didn’t always make sense and was turned off by default. We plan on adding a demo which shows how to implement the current navigation functionality as well a demo which shows how to use a cookie to store the active panel.
Merge the autoHeight, fillSpace and clearStyle options into a new option called fixedHeight
The autoHeight, fillSpace and clearStyle options all deal with similar issues and therefore cannot be used together. Having three options for the same feature (how tall the panels should be) creates a complex and confusing API. These three options are being replaced by a single boolean option called fixedHeight. When set to true (the default), all panels will have the same height. If the accordion has a height of “auto”, then all panels will be as tall as the tallest panel (equivalent of autoHeight: true). If the accordion has an explicit height, then all panels will be sized based on that height (equivalent of fillSpace: true). When fixedHeight is set to false, no calculations will be done for the height of the panels and they will be sized based on their content (equivalent of clearStyle: true).
Rename icon.headerSelected option to icon.activeHeader
This option is being renamed for consistency both within Accordion (active vs. selected when dealing with the active panel) and within the full jQuery UI suite.
Remove activate method
The activate method will be removed in favor of updating the active option. The inclusion of the activate method doesn’t simplify the use of the accordion and therefore isn’t necessary.
Rename resize method to refresh
This method is being renamed for consistency within the full jQuery UI suite. However, this will continue to only handle size changes for now. We do plan on supporting adding/removing panels in the future.
Rename changestart event to beforeactivate
This event is being renamed for consistency both within Accordion (activate vs. change when dealing with the active panel) and within the full jQuery UI suite.
Rename change event to activate
This event is being renamed for consistency both within Accordion (activate vs. change when dealing with the active panel) and within the full jQuery UI suite.
Add .ui-accordion-heading class
There is currently no class being added to the headings for each panel. This results in the stylesheet using .ui-accordion-header a for styling, which makes adding additional anchors to the headers difficult. To solve this, we will add a class to the first child of each header and use the new class for styling.
Feedback
We’d love to hear your feedback on these changes. We want to make sure we address any issues the community may have before we finalize and implement these changes. If you have any feedback, please post it on the related forum post. Thanks.
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