jquery span tag

Question

In my code I have this:

<textarea id="screen" cols="40" rows="20" readonly> </textarea>

which displays the data in the screen id, obviously.

But when I change it to:

<span id="screen"></span>

or

<div id="screen"></div>

it shows nothing.

Go easy on me i'm a rookie.

additional info

this is in my script tag in the head section:

function update()
{
$.post("chat_new_serv.php", {}, function(data){ $("#screen").val(data);});  

setTimeout('update()', 3000);
}

$(document).ready(

function() 
{
 update();

 $("#button").click(    
  function() 
  {         
   $.post("chat_new_serv.php", 
{ message: $("#message").val()},
function(data){ 
$("#screen").val(data); 
$("#message").val("");
}
);
  }
 );
});

The new_chat_serv page just outputs the chat text from the database.

Answer 1

val() will only get/set the contents of input elements ( TEXTAREA included). Use html() or text() to get/set the contents of other HTML tags.

From your code:

$("#screen").val(data); 

Would become:

$("#screen").html(data); 

Answer 2

对于<textarea>您可以使用.val() ，但是对于<div>和<span>您想要使用.html()或.text() 。