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()

Marcus Schumacher
Marcus Schumacher
16,616 Points
Posted by Marcus Schumacher
Marcus Schumacher
16,616 Points

Need help with this J Query challenge

Instructions are:

Using jQuery only, add to all links with the class "external", the target attribute with the value of "_blank".

I have no idea what to do here. Please help. Thanks.

js/app.js
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>

3 Answers

Tushar Singh
PLUS
Tushar Singh
Courses Plus Student 8,692 Points
Tushar Singh
Tushar Singh
Courses Plus Student 8,692 Points

Whenever you have to change the attribute or set the attribute, use "attr".

"target"---- attribute to target "_blank"--- set the value of that attribute

$(".external").attr("target", "_blank");
Niilo Smeds
Niilo Smeds
12,540 Points
Niilo Smeds
Niilo Smeds
12,540 Points

It is asking you to target all anchor elements ("a") with the class "external," like so:

$("a.external").attr('target' ,'_blank');
Brad Sprague
Brad Sprague
5,523 Points
Brad Sprague
Brad Sprague
5,523 Points

The phrasing of the question is confusing. to me I poked around long enough to guess the answer. In case it is a murky to someone else, here is what it is asking:

  1. "add to all links": This means work with <a> elements.

  2. 'with the class "external" ': That gets us to a.external.

  3. "Using jquery only," we find all such elements like this: $("a.external")

  4. "The target attribute." As in the video, we can add/access the attributes like this: $("a.external").attr(). Now the name of the attribute is passed-in as a string, so we need this code: $("a.external").attr('target', )

  5. Finally, "the value of "_blank". The English grammar is ambiguous. It either means "the literal value (which is) '_blank' " (meaning use a string literal). Or the author might have meant the value stored in the variable whose name is "_blank". I don't know how to make the determination except to try both and see which passes inspection. It turns out enclosing "_blank" in quotation marks passes, so it is a string literal, not a variable.