You can use your own custom atributes to attach more information to a tag.
make a note to look into using your own tags in jquery.check out lukes hall of fame code for inspiration.
Heres a great example. I needed to mark tasks as completed or not, and using a custom attribute works well. I add the attribute “taskstatus” to be “new”, open, or “completed” based on results from a call to the database. Then I can select any task that has the attribute as so….
thetasks=$(‘#maintasklist div[taskstatus=completed]’);
This looks for divs with my custom taskstatus set to completed, inside a container with id of maintasklist.