Question

My Jquery:

$("#leftmain").append("something");

<div id="leftmain">
// append text here
<p id="loading" >Loading ...</p>
</div>

How do I append the text just above the paragraph?

Answer 1

You can use .before():

$('#loading').before("<div>something</div>");

Which will add the new node just before the #loading element: http://api.jquery.com/before

Or you can use .prepend():

$('#leftmain').prepend("<div>something</div>");

Which will add the new HTML as the first child element of the #leftmain element: http://api.jquery.com/prepend

Here is a demo showing how each of the methods I suggest work: http://jsfiddle.net/jasper/ndqpp/

Update

To fade-in dynamically created content you can set it to hidden by default then call .fadeIn() on the new content:

$('#leftmain').prepend("<div style='display : none'>something</div>").children().first().fadeIn(500);

or if you use .before():

$('#loading').before("<div style='display : none'>something</div>").prev().fadeIn(500);