stoping a appendto from happening

[Shadowing]

Hey guys I"m trying to edit someones plug in and im having a problemI need to prevent the appendTo from happening more then once what this plug in does is it has a div follow your mouse cursorbut the problem i have with it is if i move the mouse to fast to the right it was making the div be removed so i exit out the remove "preview" but now i cant prevent it from conintuing apending the id previewone thing that did work was using $('#preview').html(''); before it so it clears it first but it caused lag to happend.

(function($) {    $.fn.trackStar = function(options) {	    debug(this);	    var opts = $.extend({}, $.fn.trackStar.defaults, options);	    return this.each(function() {		    $this = $(this);		    var o = $.meta ? $.extend({}, opts, $this.data()) : opts;		     		    $this.hover(function(event) {			    $('body').append('<div id="preview" style="z-index:800; position: absolute;"></div>');			   			  			     $('#' + opts.displayID).clone().css('id', '').appendTo($('#preview')).show(0);			     			    }		   		    $('#preview')				    .css('top', (event.pageY - opts.xOffset) + 'px')				    .css('left', (event.pageX + opts.yOffset) + 'px')				    .fadeIn('fast');	    }, function(event) {		    //$('#preview').remove();	    });	    $this.mousemove(function(event) {		    $('#preview')				    .css('top', (event.pageY - opts.xOffset) + 'px')				    .css('left', (event.pageX + opts.yOffset) + 'px');	    });	    });    };    function debug($obj) {	    if (window.console && window.console.log) {			 ;//console.log();	    }    };    // plug-in defaults    $.fn.trackStar.defaults = {	    xOffset: 10,	    yOffset: 30    };})(jQuery);

[dsonesuk]

??? what if you check to see if it already exists, this might work if($("#preview").index()==-1) //only proceed if no id preview element already exists {}

[Shadowing]

thanks for the responce dsonesuk . ya that was the first thing I tried so i googled how to check for a element that exist but they said to check its lenght which didnt work I'll try your way out

[Shadowing]

nice ya that worked. It made it alot smoother now but damn there is still lag. The problem happends when i move the mouse to the right really fast the mouse catches up to the picture that is following the mouse. But I believe the problem is cause the mouse is leaving the area when it hovers on top of the picture following the mouse so I need to figure out how to make it ignore it when it hovers on top of the picture

Edited August 7, 2012 by Shadowing