[cupidvogel]

Hi. I have set the left-margin of a div to 20px:

div {
margin-left: 20px; }

However when I am using the following jQuery code to extract this margin left property value by using the left property, all I am getting is auto, whereas I expect 20px:

var $m= ($("div").css("left"));

I know that this is a valid property because I have seen a few animation examples in some jQuery books where an element is moved towards the right over a period of time by setting a final position for the left-margin of the element in this way:

var paraWidth = $('div.speech p').outerWidth();
var $switcher = $(this).parent();
var switcherWidth = $switcher.outerWidth();
$switcher.animate({left: paraWidth - switcherWidth,
height: '+=20px', borderWidth: '5px'}, 'slow');

Can anybody tell me how to extract the value 20px?

This post has been edited by cupidvogel: 08 February 2011 - 12:48 PM

[Wimpy]

You haven't actually set the "left" css-property, but merely the "margin-left" css-property.

This should give you the 20px you're after.

$("div").css("margin-left");

Hope it helps!

[cupidvogel]

Thanks. It worked. However, I don't understand, why and how do we use just left while acting as a setter (as in line 4 of the jQuery code I provided), but margin-left while acting as a getter. Can you explain?

[Wimpy]

left and margin-left are two "completely" different css-properties. Left specifies the elements left position of its offset parent while margin-left specifies its offset from its own left position. the left property is dependent on what type of position ( static | fixed | absolute | relative ) the element has, margin-left is not. I'm not really an expert on the matter so my "truth" may not be 100% accurate but it's somewhere along those lines. Hope it helps!

cupidvogel, on 09 February 2011 - 10:03 AM, said:

Thanks. It worked. However, I don't understand, why and how do we use just left while acting as a setter (as in line 4 of the jQuery code I provided), but margin-left while acting as a getter. Can you explain?

[cupidvogel]

Thanks. It helped..