Creating plugins with the jQuery UI widget factory

As we saw in Chapter 7, Using Plugins, jQuery UI has an assortment of widgets--plugins that present a particular kind of UI element, such as a button or slider. These widgets present a consistent API to JavaScript programmers. This consistency makes learning to use one easy. When a plugin that we're writing will create a new user interface element, extending the jQuery UI library with a widget plugin is often the right choice.

A widget is an intricate piece of functionality, but fortunately we are not left to our own devices in creating one. The jQuery UI core contains a factory method called $.widget(), which does a lot of the work for us. Using this factory will help ensure that our code meets the API standards shared by all jQuery UI widgets.

Plugins we create using the widget factory have many nice features. We get all of these perks (and more) with very little effort on our part:

• The plugin becomes stateful, meaning that we can examine...