From what I can see ui:dialog isnt a standard psuedo css element, so I was wondering what the following line achieved:

$j("#inline:ui-dialog").dialog("destroy");

I could find a div with id "inline" but where does the ui-dialog come from ?

• jquery
• css

$.widget() provides a pseudo-selector for your widget automatically. The pseudo-selector is created from the jQuerySubclass, the namespace and the call name.

$.widget('ui.mywidget',{});
// same like this
$.widget('jQuery.ui.mywidget',{});

The associated speudo-selector is:

':ui-mywidget'

Which means every widget created using $.widget() automatically provides a pseudo selector.

Here is a reference.

The jquery UI widget factory has automatic pseudo selector generation for all widgets.