So, if you've ever converted an options list into a single array of values you might have intuitively done this:

var select = $('#mySelectElement')[0];
var values = new Array();
for (var i=0; i < select.length; i++) {
  values.push(select.options[i].value);
}

Pretty boring aye?

There is a snazzier (is that a word?) alternative, which is to use jQuery.map:

var select = $('#mySelectElement')[0];
var values = $.map(select.options, function(n) {
    return n.value;
});

OK, only one line saving but doesn't that feel good?!?

I recently came across a really compact array shuffling function on JSFromHell.com, which I thought would make a nifty jQuery plugin.

This jQuery shuffle plugin could be applied to any HTML element or Array object.

 
(function($){
  $.fn.shuffle = function() {
    return this.each(function(){
      var items = $(this).children();
      return (items.length)
        ? $(this).html($.shuffle(items))
        : this;
    });
  }
 
  $.shuffle = function(arr) {
    for(
      var j, x, i = arr.length; i;
      j = parseInt(Math.random() * i),
      x = arr[--i], arr[i] = arr[j], arr[j] = x
    );
    return arr;
  }
})(jQuery);
 

Due to line wrapping issues in this post I inserted a few hard carriage returns in the above snippet (sorry).

Example 1: shuffle an unordered list

 
$('ul').shuffle();
 

Example 2: shuffle an array

 
var arr = [1,2,3,4,5,6];
arr = $.shuffle(arr);
 

There is a demo here. And for those interested I encourage you to download the plugin for closer inspection.