jQuery: Plain HTML/CSS with core jQuery or jQuery UI for a blog?

Question

I'm about to implement a blog, and I'm pretty sure I want to go with jQuery, because I really like it.

However, when I last did jQuery, I just did plain HTML/CSS and then improved the user experience with what jQuery has to offer. Meanwhile, jQuery UI has been released, and it looks like a full-fledged user interface framework like Ext JS.

Can I benefit from jQuery UI with a rather simple website like this, or is it more geared towards web applications like GMail?

jQuery UI is quite large and seems to have lots and lots of CSS in their skins. I'm a bit worried that I would have to write/adjust tons of CSS to make the blog look like I want it to. If I did plain HTML/CSS, I would have fine-grained control over the appereance.

Edit: I'll stress again that I'm specifically wondering whether jQuery UI is intended for and useful for a simple website like a blog. It is no doubt useful for more sophisticated web applications.

Edit 2: Thanks for all your answers, too bad I couldn't accept more than one. By now I realised that jQuery UI is not like I expected a full-fledged web application framework, but rather a bunch of useful utilities on top of jQuery. I think I'll use it, if only for Draggable, Droppable and Selectable.

Answer 1

You don't necessarily need to write loads of CSS if you don't like the supplied styles.

The jQuery UI ThemeRoller is a very good web-based GUI for customising the look of the widgets. It then allows you to download your own customised (and minified) .css and .js files containing just the widgets you need.

I suggest that you should have a play with that first and see if you can make the demo widgets look how you'd like them before making any decision.

Answer 2

You can have both... I have! Where I am using widgets (datepicker) etc, I use jquery ui, besides visit : http://jqueryui.com/themeroller/ and you can customize the colours quite easily. The UI themes are recommended strongly if you use the widgets as the widgets rely on the css defined therein to move things around, for display and selection, handling rezise of widgets.

You can always build your site using html + css then add the ui theme later, as you said it will increase the user experience greatly... besides we always end up using 1 or 2 features then extend or find other suitable plugins.

Answer 3

As always, the answer is 'it depends'.

More specifically though, it depends on what kind of a UI you're planning on. If you find yourself coding functionality that's already there in jq UI go ahead and use it. They've got a handy theme roller plugin which will allow you to customize the skin to perfectly match the look of your site, so that is a non issue.

You might also want to include it all through a CDN (offered by google or MS) so that your site doesn't get slow downloading the (relatively) heavy initial payload.