JQuery: Hover without un-hover

Question

I'm even stated surprised about jQuery's dumb way to put a hover attribute on an element. Take a look at this sample CSS:

div.test
{
   width: 20px;
   height: 20px;
   color: #000000;
   background: #FFFFFF;
}
div.test:hover
{
   color: #FFFFFF;
   background: #CC0000;
}

If we'd like to convert this to jQuery, we have to type the following:

$('div.test').css({
   'width' : '20px',
   'height' : '20px',
   'color' : '#000000',
   'background' : '#FFFFFF'
});
$('div.test').hover(function() {
   $(this).css({
      'color' : '#FFFFFF',
      'background' : '#CC0000'
   });
}, function() {
   $(this).css({
      'color' : '#000000',
      'background' : '#FFFFFF'
   });
});

Arn't there any better way to do this? It feels stupid to write obvious things.

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

You're approaching this the wrong way. You'd define a CSS class like so

.highlighted
{
   color: #FFFFFF;
   background: #CC0000;
}

$('div.test').hover(function() {
    $(this).addClass('highlighted');
}, function() {
    $(this).removeClass('highlighted');
});

Answer 2

Also you could just write the following simple plugin to do what you want (automatic unhovering):

$.fn.easyHover = function(cssProps){
   return this.each(function(){
       var $t = $(this);
       var oldProps = {};
       for(x in cssProps)
          oldProps[x] = $t.css(x);
       $t.hover(function(){
          $(this).css(cssProps);
       }, function(){
          $(this).css(oldProps);
       });
   }
}

You could then use it like this:

$('#elem').easyHover({color:'#000', background:'#ccc'});

However Praveen's answer is defenitly the way to go.

Answer 3

Where you're mistaken is in thinking jQuery tries to replace CSS.

jQuery doesn't "add a hover tag", it merely provides handlers for JavaScript's hover event (IIRC it's actually an abstraction of mouseover/mouseout). If you want to emulate CSS's hover pseudo-selector with JS, jQuery makes it easy for you by giving you an easy-to-use event handler binding.

Answer 4

I suppose another way to go would be the following:

// In you stylesheet, just define the default properties
div.test
{
   width: 20px;
   height: 20px;
}

Then, make a simple object wrapper to hold the properties you want to use

var hoverHelper = (function () {
   var styles = {
      hoverStyle: {
         'color' : '#FFFFFF',
         'background' : '#CC0000'
      },
      defaultStyle: {
         'color' : '#000000',
         'background' : '#FFFFFF'
      }
   };

   return {
      init: function (selector) {
         $(selector).hover(
            function () {
               $(this).css(styles.hoverStyle);
            },
            function () {
               $(this).css(styles.defaultStyle);
            }
         );
      }
   };
}());

hoverHelper.init('.hoverElementClass'); // Apply the hover functions
                                        // to all matching elements

This way, at least you keep the style definitions in one place.