I built a number of plugins which used:

1. var id=$.data([dom element]);

to generate a unique ID for a particular dom object.  This apparently was not kosher since it no longer works in 1.4.1 (returns null).  

QUESTION: Is there a way to get a similiar result in 1.4.1?  I know i could do some kind of counter advance and then assign the element an id using .data(key,var), but the method above was very simple and quite convenient.

thx, jeremy