Calling a function as soon as an element is encountered.

Question

Suppose I have an element on my page with id "some_id". I want to call a function as soon as I encounter this element. Something like following.

$("#some_id").call_a_function(function () {
  // do stuff
});

Answer 1

Checkout this jquery plugin as an alternative to $(document).ready()

http://plugins.jquery.com/project/available

Allows you to specify a handler to a DOM element as soon as it becomes available.

Answer 2

Not sure what you mean by "encounter this element". If you mean as soon as the element is parsed, you could always inline some script right after it:

<div id="some_id">Hello</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
$("#some_id").call_a_function(function () {  
  // do stuff  
});  
</script>

The javascript code will be parsed right after the div. Of course, this wouldn't be much quicker than using $(document).ready() on small pages.