title: How do I pre-populate a jQuery Datepicker textbox with today's date?
body: <p>I have a very simple jQuery Datepicker calendar:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$(document).ready(function(){
      $("#date_pretty").datepicker({ 
      });
  });
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and of course in the HTML...</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;input type="text" size="10" value="" id="date_pretty"/&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Today's date is nicely highlighted for the user when they bring up the calendar, but how do I get jQuery to pre-populate the textbox itself with today's date on page load, without the user doing anything?  99% of the time, the today's date default will be what they want.</p>