How can one change the CSS attributes of "html" itself in javascript?

Question

I have the following javascript, using jQuery:

$('html').css('font-size','10px');

I would like to do the same thing without using jQuery.

I've tried document.getElementsByTagName('html').style.fontSize but it didn't work.

It seems like it should be easy, but because HTML is part of every page about javascript & css, googling an answer turns up too many unrelated results.

It is the same question but the selected answer is not present on the other page. — Andrew Swift
– Andrew Swift, Commented Feb 18, 2015 at 17:33

Jackson · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-18 13:34:20Z

5

Try this instead. getElementsByTagName returns a list of items. You need to reference the first item.

document.getElementsByTagName('html')[0].style.fontSize = '10px';

answered Feb 18, 2015 at 13:34

Jackson

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1 Comment

Andrew Swift Over a year ago

This answer might be more robust (I don't know), but I try to avoid accessing arrays whenever possible... there's no particular speed hit this time because it gets executed only once, but it feels logically messy to get something from an array if I can get it directly.

lupz · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-18 13:37:35Z

2

You can use

var htmlElement = document.documentElement;

to select the html element. In order to set styles go on as you allready did:

htmlElement.style.fontSize = '10px';

answered Feb 18, 2015 at 13:37

lupz

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3 Comments

Cerbrus Over a year ago

Why is this downvoted? This works just fine.

Andrew Swift Over a year ago

I actually combined both to: document.documentElement.style.fontSize = 10px';

lupz Over a year ago

@AndrewSwift That will do it as well. Usually I prefer to set css classes from javascript instead of manipulatiing style properties directly.

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