jQuery: width() not working

here's my simple code:

var msgbox = $("<div style='width:320px;height:200px;'></div>");
alert(msgbox.width());

the al开发者_Go百科ert gives me zero - what's wrong? why isn't it 320?

thx

You should insert your div in the document first. Or use .css("width") instead.

You need to first append the element to the DOM before trying to measure its size:

$('body').append(msgbox);
alert(msgbox.width());