Force DOM redraw/refresh on Chrome/Mac

Question

Every once in a while, Chrome will render perfectly valid HTML/CSS incorrectly or not at all. Digging in through the DOM inspector is often enough to get it to realize the

Answer 1

Not sure exactly what you're trying to achieve but this is a method I have used in the past with success to force the browser to redraw, maybe it will work for you.

// in jquery
$('#parentOfElementToBeRedrawn').hide().show(0);

// in plain js
document.getElementById('parentOfElementToBeRedrawn').style.display = 'none';
document.getElementById('parentOfElementToBeRedrawn').style.display = 'block';

If this simple redraw doesn't work you can try this one. It inserts an empty text node into the element which guarantees a redraw.

var forceRedraw = function(element){

    if (!element) { return; }

    var n = document.createTextNode(' ');
    var disp = element.style.display;  // don't worry about previous display style

    element.appendChild(n);
    element.style.display = 'none';

    setTimeout(function(){
        element.style.display = disp;
        n.parentNode.removeChild(n);
    },20); // you can play with this timeout to make it as short as possible
}

EDIT: In response to Šime Vidas what we are achieving here would be a forced reflow. You can find out more from the master himself http://paulirish.com/2011/dom-html5-css3-performance/