JQuery - "highlight" effect help

Question

Looking at the "highlight" JQuery effect:

http://docs.jquery.com/UI/Effects/Highlight

You can change the background color of any DIV to fade in/out

However, the example is to "highlight" on a "click" event

$("div").click(function () {
      $(this).effect("highlight", {}, 3000);
});

How can I programatically call the highlight method as though it was a function within my code (instead of activate on a 'click' event)?

Answer 1

$("div").effect("highlight", {}, 3000);

As pointed by JorenB this will highlight all the div's in your page.

If you only want to highlight one div like:

<div id="myDiv"></div>

You should do:

$("div#myDiv").effect("highlight", {}, 3000);

If you want to highlight all div's with a specific classe you cand do:

<div id="myDiv1" class="myClass"></div>
<div id="myDiv2" class="myClass"></div>

$("div.myClass").effect("highlight", {}, 3000);

For more information on selectors see JQuery Selectors.

Answer 2

it would simply be

$([your selector]).effect("highlight", {}, 3000);

Answer 3

You can also achieve that by triggering the click event, if you have that in your click handler anyway:

$('div').click();

or:

$('div').trigger('click');