jquery validator errorPlacement offset problem

I'm trying to use errorPlacement with the Validator plugin for jquery, but I'm having issues with the offset. If the element is hidden at the time of validation (in a different tab), the offset returns the value 0,0 (top left corner of screen).

$(document).ready(function() {

var tabs = $("#tabs").tabs();

var validator = $("#myForm").validate({

        errorElement: "div",
        wrapper: "div",  // a wrapper around the error message
        errorPlacement: function(error, element) {

            if (element.parent().hasClass('group')){
                element = element.parent();
            }


            offset = element.position();
            error.insertBefore(element)
            error.addClass('message');  // add a class to the wrapper
            error.css('position', 'absolute');
            error.css('left', offset.left + element.outerWidth());
            error.css('top', offset.top);


        }
    });
}

Any suggestions on how to fix this? I would recalculate the offsets when the tab changes or something, but it's being done in validate which I understood is only called once.

Thanks for the help!

Edit:

I still seem to be stuck on this. The problem I'm finding is that (at least from what I read), I can't call validate more than once. Do you think somehow adding each error message and element key pair to a list wo开发者_JAVA百科uld work, or is that a dirty hack? I'm not really sure how to add them to a list anyway. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks!!

---

This: "The problem I'm finding is that (at least from what I read), I can't call validate more than once." is actually not true. You can manually trigger form validation any time from your javascript code, and with a little trick you can even specify what part of your form should be validated.

Assuming that:

• you have a tabbed form,
• tabs are wrapped in divs
• hidden tabs have css class "inactive", visible tab has css class "active"
• you have forward and back button on your form for navigation along the tabs

I'd do something like this:

$(document).ready(function() {

    var validator = $("#myForm").validate({
            ... // your settings
            ignore : ['#tabs .inactive input'] // tells the validator to only validate elements on your current tab
        });
    }


    $(".forward").click(function() {
        if (validator.form()) {  // triggers validation of the currently visible form inputs
                // step forward to the next tab
        }
    });
});

Also, if you're looking for a cut'n'paste solution, have a look at this multiple-step form validation example: http://jquery.bassistance.de/validate/demo/multipart/