I use the telerik web controls exclusively in my web application and that requires me to utilize the $find() method to get a reference to each control's client side api. However I also use jquery to perform custom tasks that their api does not. I'd like to be able to pass any object assigned returned by the $find() method and pass it into jquery and have jquery "just work".

Example of how I want jquery to work:

get my splitter control (RadSplitter)

_splitter = $find("<%= ConfigurationSplitter.ClientID %>");

get the height of the splitter using jquery

$(_searchToolbar).height();

As of right now this doesn't work. jquery doesn't recognize the _searchToolbar object as a valid entity selector. I can currently work around this by using the following:

$(_searchToolbar.get_element()).height();

However I'd like to see jquery change so that it inspects an object passed to it and determine if its an object created with $find() and do the ".get_element()" part for me.