Altering CSS styles through JavaScript or jQuery

Exploring Options

After investigating the use of .css() to manipulate CSS properties of specific elements, I came across a website showcasing the following CSS:

body, table td, select {
    font-family: Arial Unicode MS, Arial, sans-serif;
    font-size: small;
}

Personally, I never favored the Arial Unicode font. This led me to utilize Chrome's Style Inspector in order to change Arial Unicode MS to something more preferable like Segoe UI. Is there another approach that can achieve the same result without resorting to the following method?

Potential Solutions

$("body, table td, select").css("font-family", "Segoe UI");
  • Recursively intensive and may impact performance.
  • Ineffective when dealing with dynamically loaded content.

Consider Alternative Methods

$('<style>body, table td, select {font-famnily: "Segoe UI";}</style>')
    .appendTo("head");
  • Are there better alternatives available?
  • Generates numerous <style> tags which may not be ideal.

Answer №1

If you have a personal preference, it is recommended to use user styles CSS as they take precedence over all other styles. Inline-styles come next in priority, followed by !important styles, specificity, and default browser styles. For personal preferences, create a custom CSS file and use a browser that supports it.

As a developer, avoid making style changes in JavaScript or user scripts. It is more efficient to directly change the styles in the code instead of burdening the browser with unnecessary parsing tasks. Keep in mind that if your site is public, consider styling it generically for all users.

If you are not a developer, one approach could be to replace external stylesheets with modified versions that fit your needs. This involves copying the original CSS file, making necessary changes, and loading it via JS using <link> or AJAX. However, this method has its challenges such as lack of an onload event for <link> and CORS limitations for AJAXing CSS files.

An alternative method is to have JS inspect loaded stylesheets and selectively modify their contents. This requires more JS work but ensures a safer modification process. Keep in mind that browser support for this method may vary.

Using .css() for applying inline styles can be recursive, but it guarantees that the styles will take effect due to their higher priority. However, manipulating styles through the DOM can be resource-intensive.

* Note: The library mentioned does not remove existing styles but manages predefined styles declared using its API.

Answer №2

Check out these resources:

  • Quirksmode: Change CSS
  • Mastering CSS with Javascript
  • Best way to alter styles using JavaScript? (potential duplicate)

There doesn't seem to be a specific library for this yet, it would be great to have one...

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