My Favorite jQuery Plugin Template (kolodny.github.io)

Why not: options = $.extend(true, {}, defaults, options);

What is the problem with `$this = $(this)` ? You used `that` but I didn't get that.

Neat. I also like this one (Coffeescript): https://gist.github.com/rjz/3610858

Cool stuff! This reminds me a lot of jQuery Boilerplate: https://github.com/jquery-boilerplate/jquery-boilerplate/blo...

Personally, I find the "that" variable to be a little confusing. A developer looking at the code might wonder whether "that" is the plugin, a DOM element, or something else. To make the code a little clearer, you could use something like "elem" to represent the element on which the plugin has been called, and "plugin" to represent the plugin itself.

Happy coding!

I'm not a huge fan of the double wrap of anonymous functions. The inner one seems entirely superfluous unless you're adding multiple plugins in one file and, I think, makes the code a little harder to read since you have to look at the invocation of the function to get all the information you need about it.

It seems a lot clearer to simply declare `var pluginName = "borderize";` at the top of the function than to pass it in. Granted, that does add 6 characters to the total length of the file.

Save a few bytes.

  ;!function($){
    ...
    return this.each(function($elem, elem){
      $elem = $(elem);
      ...
    });
   ...
  }(jQuery);

These days I'd prefer a plugin template that doesn't infect the jQuery namespace by default (and is AMD compatible) so I can use it with a module loader:

  var borderize = require('jquery.borderize');
  ...
  borderize('div');

And my linter will tell me off if I forget a require.

Edit: I guess such a thing is not really a 'jQuery plugin' but a 'module that depends on jQuery'.

How does anyone consider this sane javascript? Is this what the community has been reduced too?

I find the pluginName parameter excessive.