Has a newly created element been styled or are all values set to default since it is outside of the DOM?

First, I begin by creating an element:

let link = document.createElement('a');

After my document is fully loaded and all styles and scripts are applied.

The styles may look something like this:

a { background-color: salmon; }

Therefore, it will be applied to all A tags.

When this new element is created in these circumstances, are all CSS properties automatically set to their defaults as outlined in the specification? Or is it styled at the time of creation?

Answer №1

Before an element is attached to the DOM, it will not have any styling applied to it. This means that its computed-style will not be available until after it has been rendered:

Here is an example using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript:

<a href="#">Something</a>

CSS:

a {
    color: purple;
}

JavaScript:

var body = document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0];
var a = document.createElement('a');
a.href = 'http://google.com/';
a.innerHTML = 'link to google';

console.log('color: ' + window.getComputedStyle(a,null).getPropertyValue('color'));

body.appendChild(a);

console.log('color: ' + window.getComputedStyle(a,null).getPropertyValue('color'));

JS Fiddle.

However, if you explicitly add styling to the element using JavaScript by modifying the 'style' attribute of the element, that styling information will be available immediately (though still not through getComputedStyle()):

var body = document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0];
var a = document.createElement('a');
a.href = 'http://google.com/';
a.innerHTML = 'link to google';
a.style.color = 'green';

console.log('color: ' + a.style.color);

body.appendChild(a);

console.log('color: ' + a.style.color);

JS Fiddle.

Answer №2

This code snippet demonstrates how element styles are affected when inserted into the document:

 getComputedStyle( document.createElement('span') ).fontSize;
//""

 getComputedStyle( document.body.appendChild( document.createElement('span') ) ).fontSize;
//"16px"

Answer №3

If you're interested in learning more about browser rendering, check out this informative article:

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