How to dynamically add a style for text-align using jQuery

Question

I'm trying to correct the usual IE bugs around CSS 2.1 and need a way to alter an elements style properties to add a custom text-align style.

Currently in jQuery you can do something like

$(this).width( or $(this).height(

but I can't seem to find a good way to alter the text-align w/ this same approach.

The item already has a class and I do set the text-align in that class with no luck. Is it possible to just add a text-align css attribute to this element after a class is defined?

I have something like this

$(this).css("text-align", "center");

just after my width adjustment and after I view this in firebug I see only "width" is the only property set on the style ... any help?

EDIT:

Whoa - big response on this question! Thanks to everyone who replied! A bit more detail around the problem at hand:

I'm tweaking the js source for jqGrid A3.5 to do some custom sub grid work and the actual JS i'm tweaking is shown below (sorry for using "this" in my examples above, but I wanted to keep this simple for brevity)

var subGridJson = function(sjxml, sbid) {
                    var tbl, trdiv, tddiv, result = "", i, cur, sgmap,
              dummy = document.createElement("table");
                    tbl = document.createElement("tbody");
                    $(dummy).attr({ cellSpacing: "0", cellPadding: "0", border: "0" });
                    trdiv = document.createElement("tr");
                    for (i = 0; i < ts.p.subGridModel[0].name.length; i++) {
                        tddiv = document.createElement("th");
                        tddiv.className = "ui-state-default ui-th-column";
                        $(tddiv).html(ts.p.subGridModel[0].name[i]);
                        $(tddiv).width(ts.p.subGridModel[0].width[i]);

                        trdiv.appendChild(tddiv);
                    }
                    tbl.appendChild(trdiv);

I've tried both of the below (from the answers provided) with no luck.

$(tddiv).width(ts.p.subGridModel[0].width[i]).attr('style', 'text-align: center');

AND

$(tddiv).width(ts.p.subGridModel[0].width[i]).css('text-align', 'center');

I will continue to work on this issue today and post a final solution for anyone feeling my pain around this strange issue.

Answer 1

$(this).css("text-align", "center"); should work, make sure 'this' is the element you're actually trying to set the text-align style to.

Answer 2

Never encountered that problem, you could try using the long-hand way and using .css for width too.

Agreeing with above answer, make sure that you are not confusing scopes, as this is a pretty volatile variable...

Answer 3

You have the right idea, as documentation shows:

http://docs.jquery.com/CSS/css#namevalue

Are you sure you're correctly identify this with class or id?

For example, if your class is myElementClass

$('.myElementClass').css('text-align','center');

Also, I haven't worked with Firebug in a while, but are you looking at the dom and not the html? Your source isn't changed by javascript, but the dom is. Look in the dom tab and see if the change was applied.

Answer 4

You could also try the following to add an inline style to the element:

$(this).attr('style', 'text-align: center');

This should make sure that other styling rules aren't overriding what you thought would work. I believe inline styles usually get precedence.

EDIT: Also, another tool that may help you is Jash (http://www.billyreisinger.com/jash/). It gives you a javascript command prompt so you can ensure you easily test javascript statements and make sure you're selecting the right element, etc.

Answer 5

I think you should use "textAlign" instead of "text-align".

Answer 6

Interesting. I got the same problem as you when I wrote a test version.

The solution is to use jquery's ability to chain and do:

$(this).width(500).css("text-align", "center");

Interesting find though.

To expand a bit, the following does not work

$(this).width(500);
$(this).css("text-align", "center");

and results only in the width being set on the style. Chaining the two, as I suggested above, does seem to work.

Answer 7

I usually use

$(this).css({
 "textAlign":"center",
 "secondCSSProperty":"value" 
});

Hope that helps

Answer 8

somehow useless till you can do this text align through css. Still looking for a jquery function to make vertical & horizontal (center) align to a div.