jquery variables for functions

[mr curious]

I'm creating a click function for a set of links that changes the background image of each of those links( different images for each link).

What I have is this:

$(document).ready(function(){ 

$('#nav a').click(function() {

 //$('#hlink').css({ backgroundImage : "url(images/home_animate.jpg)" });
 
});

where #nav is the id for the div containing the links and #link being the id of one of the links.

this all works fine, but what I want is
this:

$('\'#' + $element + '\'').css({ backgroundImage : "url(images/home_animate.jpg)" });

where $element stores the id of the link clicked.
I can get $element to store the id of the link clicked but when I try to append
$element to the .css({ backgroundImage : "url(images/home_animate.jpg)" }); it doesn;t work
any help would be great.

Thanks

[venegal]

If this is about doing something with same element that triggered the event (the link that has just been clicked): That one's stored in this, so

PHP Code:

$(this).css({ backgroundImage : "url(images/home_animate.jpg)" }); 


will work just fine.

But if you really have to use the id stored in $element, the correct syntax would be

PHP Code:

$('#' + $element).css({ backgroundImage : "url(images/home_animate.jpg)" }); 


$element, btw, is an odd variable name for a string. Usually, variables that start with '$' are used only for jQuery objects.