There was a time when just the mention of "jQuery" was enough to cause my face to wrinkle up. This was largely due to having been weened onto the Mootools javascript framework before all else. I also can't deny the fact that I have a natural tendency to avoid the "flyboy answer" to anything. Is jQuery a great tool? Without a doubt. Its also the only framework that seems to actively promote itself, often times through misleading and inaccurate statistics, which attracts masses of flyboys, making it--you guessed it--the "flyboy answer."
However, there are many instances where we won't always be able to use our preferred tools of the trade. This fact means its especially important for any javascript developer to invest time in learning several tools and adapt solutions that make the alternatives more familiar to work with. In this post we'll compare the normative jQuery plugin pattern (as presented by jQuery) to one loosely modeled after the Mootools Class constructor to find a simple and comfortable median between the two in the context of jQuery. The result will be an object oriented plugin that is reusable and allows you to maintain state without having to do elaborate element storage.