Question

when I append an element and afterwards remove it the object still exists?

bg = $('<div class="dialog_bg"></div>');
$('#'+elm).append(bg);

bg.remove();

how is that? isn’t it possible to remove the element permanently?

Answer 1

so the element is removed from the DOM completely. That’s fine. Your question is how to ensure that the element is really removed.

I’d use the .parent() method for that. Because if the element is removed from the DOM it won’t have a parent anymore. This may be faster than $("html").has(bg) because it doesn’t have to traverse the whole DOM Tree.

bg = $('<div class="dialog_bg"></div>');
$('#'+elm).append(bg);

bg.remove();

if(bg.parent().length == 0) {
   // removed succesfully
} else {
   // still somewhere in the dom
}

// tells the garbage collector to free the memory because there's no way to access the element anymore
bg = null;