Jquery current page selection.

[minimogul]

I was wondering if anyone could help me with a current page selection for my navigation bar. I am a noob to javascript and jquery and I would like to use jquery for this. I don't know how to implement it. I have a drop down menu.

I have found the following and was wondering why they don't work for me please tell me anything you can think of I'm probrably using it in the wrong section. I have tried in the head and in the body. But i was under the impression that only plugins needed to go in the head idk please help.

(Note: I have change the selected to my the class i styled, if that might also be a mistake.)

Here are the links:
http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials:Auto-Selecting_Navigation

$(function(){
   var path = location.pathname.substring(1);
   if ( path )
     $('#sidebar_content a[href$="' + path + '"]').attr('class', 'selected');
 });

http://css-tricks.com/snippets/jquery/highlight-all-links-to-current-page/

$(function(){
       $("a").each(function(){
               if ($(this).attr("href") == window.location.pathname){
                       $(this).addClass("selected");
               }
       });
});

please keep in mind im a noob and i might need a little more detail in order to understand. Thanks in advance.