Cross-browser way to retrieve styles for elements via the DOM

peter (Peter Cooperx) — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 21:02:32 GMT

document.getElementById('whatever').style only gives local styles, but if you want those specified in external CSS definitions, you have to arse about (why, oh, why?) and do it like this:



function newGetStyle(nodeName, sStyle) {

	var x = document.getElementById(nodeName);

	var y;

	if (x.currentStyle) {

		y = x.currentStyle[sStyle];

	} else {

		try {

		y = document.defaultView.getComputedStyle(x,null).getPropertyValue(sStyle);

	  } catch(e) { }

	}

	return y;

}

DZone Snippets: currentstyle code

Cross-browser way to retrieve styles for elements via the DOM