I'm not a big fan of JavaScript, But I have written this code to open and shut a box. Below is the Code I'm using.

function description(element){
	if (element.className='description_open'){
		element.className='description';
	} 
	if (element.className='description') {
		element.className='description_open';
	} else {
		element.className='description';
	}
}

<div class="description" onclick="description(this);">

The box opens ok, but will not close. Is something wrong with my Javascript?

I used to make this same mistake all the time and still do. In your comparison you're only using one = when you need two. The single = is the assignment.

element.className='description_open' is actually setting element.className to be equal to 'description_open' and not testing to see if they're the same.

What you want is

element.className=='description_open'

and the same for the other if statement.

What's been happening is the first if statement always returns true after the assignment regardless of what the className is going into the function.

Definately with the above... you a double "=="

But it seems as if you can delete the first If statement as it seems repetitive with the second.

function description(element)
{
if (element.className=='description')
{
element.className='description_open';
}
else
{
element.className='description';
}
}

DonnaZ

In your if statements you aren't comparing (==) classNames but instead assigning (=) values onto them.

Here's the function as you intended it.

function description(element){
	if (element.className=='description_open'){
		element.className='description';
	} 
	if (element.className=='description') {
		element.className='description_open';
	} else {
		element.className='description';
	}
}

Those not interested in js stop reading now.

What happened in the original function is that in each if statement a new value was assigned to the className (which isn't a failing action, hence the if is handled as being 'true'), so in reality the method just assigned another value to the className 4 times. It could never assign the "description" value because of this.