Question

How would you set the position:relative property in an element that does not have an initial position property set, within jQuery’s animate()?

This does not work:

$(mLinks[id]).animate
(
    {
        position:'relative',
        left:'200px'
    }
);

Given that mLinks is a valid DOM element object.

I also tried with the duration and callback parameters.

Answer 1

It does not make sense to “animate” the css position attribute isn’t it? There is nothing between relative and absolute or static or anything like that…

This is what I would do:

$(mLinks[id]).css('position', 'relative').animate
(
    {
        left:'200px'
    }
);

If you read the corresponding jQuery doc, you will find this:

most properties that are non-numeric cannot be animated using basic jQuery functionality (For example, width, height, or left can be animated but background-color cannot be, unless the jQuery.Color() plugin is used).