How can I get the font size of an element as it was set by css

Question

I\'m writing a simple jQuery that to change the font size of an element by a certain percentage. The problem I\'m having is that when I get the size with jQuery\'s $(\'#el\'

Answer 1

All of your target browsers with the exception of IE will report to you the "Computed Style" of the element. In your case you don't want to know what the computed px size is for font-size, but rather you want the value set in your stylesheet(s).

Only IE can get this right with its currentStyle feature. Unfortunately jQuery in this case works against you and even gets IE to report the computed size in px (it uses this hack by Dean Edwards to do so, you can check the source yourself).

So in a nutshell, what you want is impossible cross-browser. Only IE can do it (provided you bypass jQuery to access the property). Your solution of setting the value inline (as opposed to in a stylesheet) is the best you can do, as then the browser does not need to compute anything.