Force DOM redraw/refresh on Chrome/Mac

Question

Not sure exactly what you're trying to achieve but this is a method I have used in the past with success to force the browser to redraw, maybe it will work for you.

// in jquery
$('#parentOfElementToBeRedrawn').hide().show(0);

// in plain js
document.getElementById('parentOfElementToBeRedrawn').style.display = 'none';
document.getElementById('parentOfElementToBeRedrawn').style.display = 'block';

If this simple redraw doesn't work you can try this one. It inserts an empty text node into the element which guarantees a redraw.

var forceRedraw = function(element){

    if (!element) { return; }

    var n = document.createTextNode(' ');
    var disp = element.style.display;  // don't worry about previous display style

    element.appendChild(n);
    element.style.display = 'none';

    setTimeout(function(){
        element.style.display = disp;
        n.parentNode.removeChild(n);
    },20); // you can play with this timeout to make it as short as possible
}

EDIT: In response to Šime Vidas what we are achieving here would be a forced reflow. You can find out more from the master himself http://paulirish.com/2011/dom-html5-css3-performance/

None of the above answers worked for me. I did notice that resizing my window did cause a redraw. So this did it for me:

$(window).trigger('resize');

We recently encountered this and discovered that promoting the affected element to a composite layer with translateZ fixed the issue without needing extra javascript.

.willnotrender { 
   transform: translateZ(0); 
}

As these painting issues show up mostly in Webkit/Blink, and this fix mostly targets Webkit/Blink, it's preferable in some cases. Especially since many JavaScript solutions cause a reflow and repaint, not just a repaint.

This solution without timeouts! Real force redraw! For Android and iOS.

var forceRedraw = function(element){
  var disp = element.style.display;
  element.style.display = 'none';
  var trick = element.offsetHeight;
  element.style.display = disp;
};