getelement

Hi Desmond!

Let's say you have an html page containing nothing but two divs. One of the divs has an id of "theSpecialOne".

Now let's say that for some reason you want to target this div in your JavaScript, maybe you want to change the color? To do this you retrieve this div to your JavaScript by using:

var variableToSaveDivIn = document.getElementById('theSpecialOne');

Basically, you use that code-snippet to target and retrieve an element with an id from your html page.

Does that help you?

Jonas

You're on the right way Desmond!

You will preferably use css for color etc as you say, so why would you use JavaScript? Maybe you want to add a clickevent to your element, then you use getelementbyid to target the element you want the clickevent on. An example below, let's pretend we have a div with the id of "desmond"

var specialDiv = document.getElementById('desmond');

specialDiv.addEventListener('click', function(){
    alert('Desmond is awesome!');
});

If you click on the div with the id of "desmond", an alertbox will show up, if you click on another div, nothing happens. Do you understand?

You can only have one item with a specific id per html page.

I hope this helps.

Jonas

Great thanks very much. I'm beginning to realise that one of my problems is knowing exactly what is a div, element, event etc.

When you say you can only have one item with a specific id does that mean I can only have one getepement per HTML page or just one per item?

Fully get you now thanks.