jQuery find() method not working on only one(!) class

Question

jQuery's find() method is not working with everything except my class .szenenkasten. It doesn't make any sense at all...

Simplified source code:

HTML

<ul class="NavBar">
    <li></li>  
    <li></li> 
    <li></li> 
    <li></li> 
    <li></li>         
</ul>

<span class="szenenkasten"></span>
<span class="szenenkasten"></span>
<span class="szenenkasten"></span>
<span class="szenenkasten"></span>
<span class="szenenkasten"></span>

jQuery

alert($('.NavBar').find('li').length);
 //returns 5
alert($('.szenenkasten').find('span').length);
 //returns 0
alert($('span').find('.szenenkasten').length);
 //returns 0
alert($('span.szenenkasten').length);
//returns 5

Answer 1

find looks among descendants of your jquery elements. Here your span aren't descendant but the same elements.

Don't use find but filter here :

alert($('.szenenkasten').filter('span').length);

or simply

alert($('span.szenenkasten'));