Reading non-inline CSS style info from Javascript

Question

I know I must be missing something here, but I cannot seem to get this to work.

I have assigned a background color to the body of an html document using the style ta

Answer 1

The style property of a DOM element refers only to the element's inline styles.

Depending on the browser, you can get the actual style of an element using DOM CSS

In firefox, for example:

var body = document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0];
var bg = window.getComputedStyle(body, null).backgroundColor;

Or in IE:

var body = document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0];
var bg = body.currentStyle.backgroundColor;