calling the show() method directly on the variable

Is there anything wrong with calling it on the ID

$(#overlay).show();

There is nothing wrong with calling it on the ID, but remember that $(selector) takes the selector as a string, so the statement should be:

$('#overlay').show();

Thanks

Hi Benjamin (or whoever else can answer this question),

Since

$('<div id="overlay"></div>').show();

does not work because you mentioned "the newly created div hasn't been added to the DOM yet".

Are you implying that by first declaring the variable, i.e., (1) var $overlay = $('<div id="overlay"></div>');

and then using the declared variable to immediately call show i.e., (2) $overlay.show();

Doing this adds the newly created div to the DOM? If so, which step in the above was the newly created div added to the dom? I'm assuming it was in (1) above?

Kindly advise, thanks!

var $overlay = $('<div id="overlay"></div>');
$overlay.show();

is exactly the same as:

$('<div id="overlay"></div>').show();

so the div is not displayed in the browser in either of these cases. To display it we need to add it to the DOM with appendTo:

var $overlay = $('<div id="overlay"></div>');
$overlay.appendTo('body');
$overlay.show();

Hope this helps