OOUI/Elements

The most basic component of the OOjs UI library is called an element (OO.ui.Element), which is an object that represents a rendering in the DOM—a button or an icon, for example, or anything that is visible to a user. Unlike widgets, plain elements usually do not have events connected to them and can't be interacted with.

Every OOjs UI element has an $element property, which is a jQuery selection of its rendered contents. Note that the OOjs UI uses the ‘$’ prefix for the names of all variables and properties that refer to jQuery selections of DOM elements. The $element property is extremely useful, and is used, for example, when creating OOjs widgets and appending them to the DOM.