jQuery .focus doesn’t actually focus a newly created element

Answer 1

You can assign tabidex and then you can set focus to that element

$('#table').attr("tabindex",1).focus();

This will work for Div Table etc which can't get focus by itself.

Answer 2

There's no problem with your code, it's just that a paragraph or div tag can't receive focus. Focus can only be given to things you can interact with, such as links, input elements, textareas, etc.

To scroll the window to this newly added element, you can use a plugin such as ScrollTo.

On a side note, your code could be simplified a bit:

var html = "<div id=\"newP\"><p>New paragraph</p></div>";
$("#content").append(html);
$("#newP p").focus();

var html = "<div id=\"newP\"><p>New paragraph</p></div>";
$(html)
    .appendTo('#content')
    .focus()   // or scrollTo(), now...
;