Targeting every 3rd, 6th, 9th etc element of a list with Jquery

jQuery('#portfolioItem').find('li')

jQuery('li', '#portfolioItem')

Should be fast too because the tag selector is also nativ

revaxarts said
or replace

jQuery('#portfolioItem').find('li')

with this

jQuery('li', '#portfolioItem')

Should be fast too because the tag selector is also nativ

Aren’t you maybe targeting all list items and the element with the id of portfolioItem.

To avoid the find use

$('#portfolioItem li')

Siddharth said
In those cases, you’re better of checking the position of an entry and assigning an appropriate class through server side code, PHP in this case, I’m assuming. Then you can merely use the class selector to manipulate specific elements in the front end, as needed.

+1. I always use an algorithm in php to detect nth element for my portfolio pages. This makes sure that the page still looks fine with non-availability of javascript. But it gets into trouble when implementing with sortable portfolio.

themolitor said
Love this tool: http://css-tricks.com/examples/nth-child-tester/

Great tool. Only (3n) is needed

wpCanyonThemes said
Aren’t you maybe targeting all list items and the element with the id of portfolioItem.

To avoid the find use

$('#portfolioItem li')

No, I’m targeting al list items within the portfolioItem

jQuery('li', '#portfolioItem') != jQuery('li, #portfolioItem')

Furthermore jQuery don’t has to check the whole DOM . It just start with the #portfolioItem

wpCanyonThemes said
To avoid the find use

$('#portfolioItem li')

No, Xaver’s method is much better.

His code will find the element with the ID and then filter for the tag. Since both use native JavaScript methods, it’ll be blazingly fast.

Your method, while quite adequate for general use, is inefficient. Sizzle, jQuery’s selector engine, handles selectors right to left so there’s a lot of overhead involved. It finds all li elements and then sees whether the ID is a parent.

Mostly, you don’t have to worry about these issues since performance becomes an issue only if you have too many elements.

For anyone who is interested in/confused about these types of efficiency questions, this quick article from Jeffrey Way is a useful read: Quick Tip: Think Right-to-Left with jQuery