title: jQuery to find all previous elements that match an expression
body: <p>Using jQuery, <strong>how do you match elements that are prior to the current element in the DOM tree?</strong> Using <code>prevAll()</code> only matches previous siblings.</p>
  
  <p>eg:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;table&gt;
      &lt;tr&gt;
          &lt;td class="findme"&gt;find this one&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;/tr&gt;
      &lt;tr&gt;
          &lt;td&gt;&lt;a href="#" class="myLinks"&gt;find the previous .findme&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;/tr&gt;
      &lt;tr&gt;
          &lt;td class="findme"&gt;don't find this one&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;/tr&gt;
  &lt;/table&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>In my specific case, I'll be searching for the <em>first</em> <code>.findme</code> element prior to the link clicked.</p>