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Answer 1

+2 A:

This will do what you want but you really do need to add an id to the div to facilitate finding it.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"&gt;
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"&gt;
<head runat="server">
    <title></title>
    <style type="text/css">
        .terms { }
        .terms dl.first { float: right; }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <div id="terms" class="terms">
        <dl>
            <dt>Term 1 name</dt>
            <dd>
                Term 1 description</dd>
        </dl>
        <dl>
            <dt>Term 2 name</dt>
            <dd>
                Term 2 description</dd>
        </dl>
        <dl>
            <dt>Term 3 name</dt>
            <dd>
                Term 3 description</dd>
        </dl>
    </div>
</body>

<script type="text/javascript">

    function firstChild(element) {
        for (var i = 0; i < element.childNodes.length; i++) {
            var child = element.childNodes[i];
            if (child.nodeType == 1) {
                return child;
            }
        }
    }
    var terms = document.getElementById("terms");

    firstChild(terms).className += " first";

</script>

</html>

Reference:

nodeType Constants

        ELEMENT_NODE                :  1
        ATTRIBUTE_NODE              :  2
        TEXT_NODE                   :  3
        CDATA_SECTION_NODE          :  4
        ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE       :  5
        ENTITY_NODE                 :  6
        PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE :  7
        COMMENT_NODE                :  8
        DOCUMENT_NODE               :  9
        DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE          : 10
        DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE      : 11
        NOTATION_NODE               : 12

Sky Sanders 2010-04-24 16:39:49

Thanks Sky Sanders. Is there any way to make it shorter?

Happy 2010-04-24 16:42:19

@glister - not that I can see. actually, if anything, this snippet should probably be a bit longer, including guards that the element passed in is, in fact, a dom element etc. in my experience, shorter is highly overrated. clarity of purpose is to be cherished in any code.

Sky Sanders 2010-04-24 16:45:23

ok, I will try to use it a bit later and accept if works. Thanks again.

Happy 2010-04-24 16:47:22

Does it add a class for a first child element?

Happy 2010-04-24 16:52:26

I would recommend learning just a bit about JavaScript first. Do not blindly use snippets, understand them beforehand. Otherwise, you're doomed.

Fyodor Soikin 2010-04-24 17:19:12

@glister - what fyodor says is correct. While I am happy to provide guidance, e.g. how to get the first child of an element, if your level of understanding of javascript is such that you cannot tell if it adds a classname you really do need to learn a bit more about js. In this case, googling how to add a classname to an element would be a good start. Cheers...

Sky Sanders 2010-04-24 17:31:47

@glister - updated the answer to accomplish your goals.

Sky Sanders 2010-04-26 23:09:13

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Simple first-child js?

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