How can I force WebKit to redraw/repaint to propagate style changes?

Question

I have some trivial JavaScript to effect a style change:

sel = document.getElementById(\'my_id\');
sel.className = sel.className.replace(/item-[1-9]-selected         


        

Answer 1

the "display/offsetHeight" hack didn't work in my case, at least when it was applied to the element being animated.

i had a dropdown menu that was being open/closed over the page content. the artifacts were being left on the page content after the menu had closed (only in webkit browsers). the only way the "display/offsetHeight" hack worked is if i applied it to the body, which seems nasty.

however, i did find another solution:

1. before the element starts animating, add a class that defines "-webkit-backface-visibility: hidden;" on the element (you could also use inline style, i'd guess)
2. when it's done animating, remove the class (or style)

this is still pretty hacky (it uses a CSS3 property to force hardware rendering), but at least it only affects the element in question, and worked for me on both safari and chrome on PC and Mac.