How do I pre-populate a jQuery Datepicker textbox with today's date?

Question

I have a very simple jQuery Datepicker calendar:

$(document).ready(function(){
    $("#date_pretty").datepicker({ 
    });
});

and of course in the HTML...

<input type="text" size="10" value="" id="date_pretty"/>

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.

Answer 1

Update: There are reports this no longer works in Chrome.

This is concise and does the job (obsolete):

$(".date-pick").datepicker('setDate', new Date());

This is less concise, utilizing chaining allows it to work in chrome (2019-06-04):

$(".date-pick").datepicker().datepicker('setDate', new Date());