Until now, each chapter in this book has focused on working with a specific widget that ships with jQuery UI. In this chapter, we're more interested in the grand scheme of things. After all, you're building an application, and not a demonstration. So, it's important that developers using jQuery UI be conscious not only about how each individual widget works on their own, but also about how they behave in their environment, and how they interact with other widgets and frameworks.
We'll also address the nuts-and-bolts of the framework in this chapter by building a widget from the ground up, with the help of the widget factory. With the generic widget machinery at your disposal, you could write a handful of widgets that have nothing to do with the default widgets. Although these custom widgets don't inherit much functionality, they behave like jQuery UI widgets, and that alone is worth the effort—cementing a layer of consistency into your application.