JQuery delay() not delaying

Question

Why does this empty the text immediately (ignoring delay)?

$('#error_box_text').html('error text').delay(5000).html('')

#

jQuery 1.4

Answer 1

delay will never delay regular methods - only those who are pushed to the animation/effect chain. If you want to delay your html() call, use queue ( http://api.jquery.com/queue/ ):

$('#error_box_text').html('error text').delay(5000).queue(function() {
   $(this).html('')
});

It would be nice if you could do

$('#error_box_text').html('error text').delay(5000, function() { $(this).html('') });

but this isn't possible (yet).