Checkboxes

Checkboxes

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Checkboxes are used to provide a list of options where more than one can be selected. Traditional desktop checkboxes are not optimized for touch input so in jQuery Mobile, we style the label for the checkboxes so they are larger and look clickable. A custom set of icons are added to the label to provide additional visual feedback.

The checkbox controls below use standard input/label markup, but are styled to be more touch-friendly. The styled control you see is actually the label element, which sits over the real input, so if images fail to load, you'll still have a functional control. In most browsers, clicking the label automatically triggers a click on the input, but we've had to trigger the update manually for a few mobile browsers that don't do this natively. On the desktop, these controls are keyboard and screen-reader accessible. View the data- attribute reference to see all the possible attributes you can add to checkboxes.

To create a single checkbox, add an input with a type="checkbox" attribute and a corresponding label. If the input isn't wrapped in its corresponding label, be sure to set the for attribute of the label to match the id of the input so they are semantically associated.

There are therefore two ways to create a checkbox and with a label as shown below:

	
<label><input type="checkbox" name="checkbox-0" /> I agree </label>
			
<input type="checkbox" name="checkbox-1" id="checkbox-1" class="custom" />
<label for="checkbox-1">I agree</label>
		

The above snippets will produce two basic checkboxes. The default styles will set the width of the element to 100% of the parent container.

Mini version

For a more compact version that is useful in toolbars and tight spaces, add the data-mini="true" attribute to the element to create a mini version.

	
<input type="checkbox" name="checkbox-0" id="checkbox-mini-0" class="custom" data-mini="true" />
<label for="checkbox-mini-0">I agree</label>

This will produce a checkbox that is not as tall as the standard version and has a smaller text size.

Field containers & Legends

Because checkboxes use the label element for the text displayed next to the checkbox form element, we recommend wrapping the checkbox in a fieldset element that has a legend which acts as the title for the question. Add the data-role="controlgroup" attribute to the fieldset so it can be styled in a parallel way as text inputs, selects or other form elements.

	
<div data-role="fieldcontain">
    <fieldset data-role="controlgroup">
	   <legend>Agree to the terms:</legend>
	   <input type="checkbox" name="checkbox-2" id="checkbox-2" class="custom" />
	   <label for="checkbox-2">I agree</label>
    </fieldset>
</div>

Vertically grouped checkboxes

Typically, there are multiple checkboxes listed under a question title. To visually integrate multiple checkboxes into a grouped button set, the framework will automatically remove all margins between buttons and round only the top and bottom corners of the set if there is a data-role="controlgroup" attribute on the fieldset.

Horizontal toggle sets

Checkboxes can also be used for grouped button sets where more than one button can be selected at once, such as the bold, italic and underline button group seen in word processors. To make a horizontal button set, add the data-type="horizontal" to the fieldset.

The framework will float the labels so they sit side-by-side on a line, hide the checkbox icons and only round the left and right edges of the group.