Question

I find myself doing this a lot, for specific properties for animation purposes, and specially when I’m generating something using database values obtained through PHP. Is there a reason not to do this.

Some sample code, to clear up ambiguity.

This would be the JQuery:

$('.class').each(function(){
    var my_new_width = $(this).attr('id');
            $(this).stop(false, true).animate({width: my_new_width}, 100);
}); 

HTML would be:

<img id='100' src='path'/>

Obviously this code offers no functionality, and is meant to be used with a .hover() or something. Just wanted to clear up the ambiguity in the question.

Answer 1

According to W3C id’s must begin with a letter, not that I expect it to blow up if you don’t. In HTML5 you will have the data- prefix to use when trying to embed data.

See this SO question for more discussion and information: Custom attributes – Yea or nay?

Personally, I prefer to use the rel attribute… for some reason it feels right to me… even though its wrong and not w3c compliant.