Find the next element that is not immediate?

Question

I want to find the first span element after class counter, in code something like this:

Answer 1

I'm not sure that the closest method will do the trick, but if so... maybe you can extract the closest method from 1.3 and turning it into a plugin?

I haven't had a chance to try this, but give it a shot. It can't hurt:

(function($) {
  $.fn.closest = function (selector) {
    return this.map(function(){
      var cur = this;
      while ( cur && cur.ownerDocument ) {
        if ( $(cur).is(selector) )
          return cur;
        cur = cur.parentNode;
      }
    });
  }
})(jQuery);