Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

JavaScript jQuery Basics (2014) Creating a Simple Lightbox Adding New Attribute Values with attr()

John Wilson
John Wilson
11,739 Points
Posted by John Wilson
John Wilson
11,739 Points

In jquery perform part 3 challenge adding attr(), why is it not reading my jquery variable correctly?

I am getting the message: I was expecting the $target attribute to be "blank", not ''

can someone please help? Thank you

js/app.js 
var $external = $("class external");
var $target = "_blank";
$external.attr("$target");
index.html 
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" title="no title" charset="utf-8">
  <title>Links Page</title>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Links</h1>
  <ul>
    <li><a href="http://google.com" class="external">Google</a></li>
    <li><a href="http://yahoo.com" class="external">Yahoo</a></li>
  </ul>
  <script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.0.min.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="js/app.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
</body>
</html>

2 Answers

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points

In case you'd prefer hints to an explicit spoiler and/or would like to know what was wrong...

:point_right: It looks like you have several issues here:

  • to select items by class, the class name must have a period (.) prepended
  • a selector with two items separated by space is a descendant selector (not what the challenge asked)
  • when setting an attribute, the attr() method must have two parameters
  • variable names should not be enclosed in quotes
Erik Nuber
Erik Nuber
20,629 Points
Erik Nuber
Erik Nuber
20,629 Points

This should work

$("a.external").attr('target' ,'_blank');
John Wilson
John Wilson
11,739 Points
John Wilson
John Wilson
11,739 Points

thanks, worked perfect!