sort

The sort plugin is a very basic low-level element sorting function that allows you to sort DOM elements with a custom comparator (similar to Array.prototype.sort).

Assuming the following markup:

<ul>
    <li>Banana</li>
    <li>Carrot</li>
    <li>Apple</li>
</ul>

You could sort the items alphabetically like so:

$('li').sortElements(function(a, b){
    return $(a).text() > $(b).text() ? 1 : -1;
});

That would result in:

<ul>
    <li>Apple</li>
    <li>Banana</li>
    <li>Carrot</li>
</ul>

It also let's you specify what element will be sorted. The current collection's elements will be those referred to as a and b on each call of the comparator, but you might not want those elements to be the ones to move. E.g. you might want it to be a parent. For example, when sorting a table column, you would sort by the <td> elements, but the elements you actually want to move within the DOM are the <tr> (each <td>'s parent):

$('td').sortElements(myComparator, function(){
    // Return a reference to the desired element:
    return this.parentNode;
});

See more info here: http://james.padolsey.com/javascript/sorting-elements-with-jquery/.