Import Plugin/Authoring guide from mediawiki

[ajpiano]

Import @ralphholzmann's guide at http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/Authoring into the plugins section.

@Schnauzer You may want to use this article as a jumping off point, inspiration or a evntual landing target for the "beginners" plugin overview you are starting on.

[ethransom]

My article (still working on it) is similar, but not as extensive as @ralphholzmann's. However, much of the content that the ralphholzmann's article covers that mine doesn't is topically covered in the other articles.

Personally, I think that ralphholzmann's article is rather long, and we should use multiple articles to cover what it covers. On the other hand, ralphholzmann's one is already written, and it's exactly what we're looking for.

[ajpiano]

I think the ideal configuration here is 3 articles

1. Why does jQuery require me to use plugins to do all this stuff? How do I install plugins, how do I use them? How can I tell good ones from bad ones? Using the plugins site (?)
2. Plugin basics: adding a new function to the jQuery prototype, preserving chainability, options, user specified callbacks, using a closure. Not claiming more than one method on jQuery.fn per plugin.
3. Advanced: storing information in .data(), namespacing event handlers, using a plugin as a wrapper/interface to an object, internal caching of data and element references, figuring out what to expose to make something "truly customisable."

The widget factory article can be its own separate thing, but I think we should do whatever we need to the other existing articles in terms of frakensteining them together until we can reach the structure above. The current Plugins/Authoring article might be a touch long, but the bottom line is those are the things we do want to present as the basics.

[scottgonzalez]

This has at least been partially addressed, but there's been no activity in the past two years, so I'm going to close this and whatever is left can be addressed as part of the routine maintenance of the site.