The widget factory

Another tool within the jQuery UI library is the widget factory, which was introduced in Version 1.8 of jQuery UI, and has since undergone some important changes. This splits the functionality that allows widgets to be easily created into a separate and standalone utility file. This is the jquery.ui.widget.js file, and we can use it to create our very own jQuery UI plugins with ease. Like jQuery itself, which provides the fn.extend() method for easily creating plugins, jQuery UI also provides mechanisms to make plugin creation easier, and to ensure that the common API functionality is retained in new plugins. We will cover the Widget Factory in more detail in a separate chapter that can be downloaded with the book.