IE9: Why setting “-ms-transform” works from css, but not with jquery.css()

Question

This works

div{
    -ms-transform: rotate(30deg);
}

And following does not

$(\"div\").css(\"-ms-transform\",\"rotate(30deg)         


        

Answer 1

The dash ('-') in the property is invalid for use in scripting. You should use msTransform instead.

By the way: though a number of browsers do understand and parse css like style['background-color'] from scripting, afaik Firefox doesn't. Furthermore I think JQuery .css(...) transforms properties like 'background-color' to their DOM-scripting equivalent ('backgroundColor' in this case) before parsing it.

To be complete: JQuery.css indeed transforms dashed properties to camelCase. Here's a representation of the JQuery.css-internals with the string '-ms-transform':

var fcamelCase = function( all, letter ) {
        return letter.toUpperCase();
    };
var rdashAlpha = /-([a-z])/ig;
// JQuery.css does a replace operation with these variables 
// on the raw property string:
alert('-ms-transform'.replace(rdashAlpha,fcamelCase)); //=> msTransform

So that's why $("div").css("-ms-transform","rotate(30deg)") doesn't work in IE9. IE9 expects: msTransform.

Why then, does $("div").css("-moz-transform", "rotate(-90deg)") work in Firefox? Because Mozilla evidently decided to use complete CamelCase for their -moz-[properties], so the MozTransform scripting style property is valid (and, by the way, mozTransform isn't ... really).

It's all to the browser then, nothing new under the digital sun.