How to use a plugin
Using a jQuery plugin is very straightforward. We need to simply obtain the plugin code, reference the plugin from our HTML, and invoke the new capabilities from our own scripts. To illustrate this, we need a plugin to examine.
The jQuery Cycle plugin will serve our needs well. This plugin, by Mike Alsup, allows us to quickly transform a static set of page elements into an interactive slideshow. Like many popular plugins, it can be very simple to use, but is highly configurable for advanced use cases.
Downloading and referencing the Cycle plugin
We can find the Cycle plugin using the jQuery Plugin Repository, or on the plugin's home page at http://www.malsup.com/jquery/cycle/. This page directs us to download instructions, which yield an archive containing both raw and compressed versions of the plugin code. For our purposes here, we'll use the file called jquery.cycle.js
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Once we have the plugin in our site's directory, we need to reference it from the <head> of the...
