We Keep Coding

How to insert an html element before another without shifting the originals position

I would like to be able to insert an element that a user can navigate (left) to without disturbing what the user currently sees. that is, the new element will be inserted offscreen, to the left, but the currently "focused" element (and the other visible ones) shouldn't be seen to move.
Currently I am doing this using insertbefore, measuring the clientWidth of the new element and subtracting that from the margin of the container element. However, clientWidth is expensive to get, and this method is proving problematic when I add transitions. Is there a cleverer way to do this? I would have thought it's a fairly common problem - insert an element before another without shifting everything else.

You could use some CSS to achieve this. Insert a wrapping div with no height, but overflow: visible, insert the elements you want inside this div:
.wrapper {
height: 0;
overflow: visible;
}
.wrapper div {
margin-left: 100%;
}

Show div on hover issue

In this fiddle you will fill when i hover on "action" a dropdown is showed.
The problem is when we see the last item it goes below the scroll and it is not seen.
in .scrollable class i have used the position:relative;
.scrollable
{
overflow: auto;
height: 300px;
position:relative;
width:100px;
}
and the child class "drop" has the position:absolute;
i dont want to change the position:relative of .scrollable class and i want the .drop element to comeout of the scrollable on hover and .drop should not be shown below the scroll;
here is the fiddle : http://jsfiddle.net/napper7/XPxsx/15/
THanks in advance!!

here is a working code,i added a bit of js to get the current cursor position
$('.navItem').each(function() {
$(this).hover(function(e) {
$(this).find(".drops").css('left',e.pageX-20);
$(this).find(".drops").css('top',e.pageY);
}, function(e) {});
});​
http://jsfiddle.net/XPxsx/43/

.scrollable
{
position:relative;
height:300px;
width:100px;
}​
I think your best bet is to drop off the overflow behavior. As far as I know, it is not possible to display nested divs outside their parent when it has an overflow value different from visible. Ever other values clip the outside box content of some sort (either by adding a scrollbar or by hiding completely the content)
I edited a jsfiddle that does what you want but without a scrollbar :
http://jsfiddle.net/XPxsx/42/
And here is some documentation on overflow behavior :
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visufx.html
Anything out of this, will be using js to display the content in a different place DOM wise.
Also, as a more general opinion : it is good to use sass (i guess from css indentation), but even better to order your selectors in a meaning order, that would be from the most general to the most specific (such as html, then body, then div.. in your case .scrollable, then .actionTools, then .navItem..)
hope that helps

jQuery and pseudo-elements

I tried to dynamically change the position of an element which is defined in CSS with :after.
Using this:
$(function(){
$('div::after').css({'top':'20px'})
})
But it doesn't work. Are there any ways to change the position?

You can't. Content created by :after or :before is not part of the DOM and therefore cannot be selected or modified.
If you have a look at this example fiddle and inspect the DOM in Firebug or similar you will see that the pseudo-element is not present in the DOM tree.
A potential solution would be to apply a class to the element you want to change, and to style that class appropriately in CSS:
$("div").addClass("newClass");
See this fiddle for an example.

add CSS:
p.special:before {
content: "bar";
position: absolute;
top : 10px;
}
assuming the style sheet where the code above was put is the first one on the page, use this to change it:
document.styleSheets[0].addRule('p.special:before','top: 15px;');

Jquery addClass function fails in IE7 for td element

For the following HTML:
<td class="width2 padLeft" id="loading_45"> </td>
the following JQuery:
$('#loading_45').addClass('loading');
With the following css definition:
td.loading
{
background-image:url("../images/icon_loading_circle.gif");
background-position:left center;
background-repeat:no-repeat;
height:auto;
position:absolute;
text-align:center;
}
does not cause the background-image to appear in IE7 (works fine in FF)
Does anyone have an idea what I am doing wrong?
As Pointy noted the problem was in the css the position:absolute; definition should be removed
Thanks all for answering so fast

I'm sure that "addClass" is working, in that it's adding the class to the element, if (as #Gaby notes) you're doing it at the right time. Since it works in Firefox, you probably are.
I suspect that the problem might simply be that your stylesheet is freaking IE7 out. Putting "position: absolute" on a table cell is likely to cause problems, like making the table cell render in completely the wrong place. When I try it, table cells always render in the upper left corner of the page, even though the stylesheet doesn't specify a "top" or "left".
Try testing your page with that class hard-coded onto the table cell and see what happens.

make sure the code runs after the DOM is loaded using
$(function(){
$('#loading_45').addClass('loading');
});
or
$(document).ready(function(){
$('#loading_45').addClass('loading');
});
Also make sure the elements has a width/height that will fit the background image.
Demo: http://www.jsfiddle.net/9PZZB/2/

Show and Hide a DIV with CSS or Javascript?

I just saw a demo that had this jquery code to show and hide a dive on hover, can't this be done with just regualr css though? And if you can do it with css is there any advantage of doing it with javascript?
$('.comment').hover(function() {
$(this).children('.delete').show();
}, function() {
$(this).children('.delete').hide();
});

CSS hover works fine with anchor tags, but IE6 does not recognize hover events on things like li tags.
If you were using an anchor tag, however, you could achieve the same effect in CSS:
a.comment .delete { display: none; }
a.comment:hover .delete { display: block; }

You can do this with CSS but IE6 only supports the :hover pseudo-class on anchor tags (A), so it's not as common.

Jody is correct. Check out the docs for the CSS Display property.

There is more functionality that the .hover will do. If you provide it more than 2 functions it will cycle through all the functions.
Example
$('.comment').hover(
function(){$(this).children('.delete.first').show()},
function(){$(this).children('.delete.first').hide()},
function(){$(this).children('.delete.second').show()},
function(){$(this).children('.delete.second').hide()}
);
That would show one set of children the first time they hover, then hide, and the next time show a different set of children.
The hover function also works over multiple elements, and only fires if the mouse has left all the elements (not just when it leaves one and moves to another)

I dynamically create something like this on the server side. I'm sure there is a more efficient/prettier way but this usually serves my needs. Basically hides all the divs and un-hides the one that needs to be shown (passed as arg in function from onClick event).
function toggleTab(id)
{
document.getElementById('divEnrollment').style.display='none';
document.getElementById('divSearch').style.display='none';
document.getElementById('divMeeting').style.display='none';
document.getElementById('divBenefit').style.display='none';
document.getElementById('div' + id).style.display='block';
document.getElementById('spnEnrollment').style.color='blue';
document.getElementById('spnSearch').style.color='blue';
document.getElementById('spnMeeting').style.color='blue';
document.getElementById('spnBenefit').style.color='blue';
document.getElementById('spn'+id).style.color = 'red';
}