How can I pull this off? I want to utilize what jQuery UI offers here without rewriting my own calendar.
I need to be able to customize the layout (physical table layout). I need to actually CHANGE the way the calendar is presented (not style wise).
I need some way to implement the decorator pattern on the datepicker.
I tried to inject using .insertAfter, but that did not seem to work well for me.
I think you are pretty much stuck with the default functionality from the jquery calandar.
It is however very modifiable so i would certainly advice you to check out all the options.
http://jqueryui.com/demos/datepicker/
If the default jquery ui calendar doesn’t fit your need then there are a lot of customizable third party calendars as well, easy to hit up with google, here are a phew all ready:
http://www.queness.com/post/656/10-beautiful-jquery-and-mootool-calendar-plugins
You can if you really want to inject and modify objects inside the generated code but i certainly wouldn’t advice this, you can’t know if your code will keep working if jQuery upgrades and it will not be trivial, you would probably be better of writing your own widget then.