jQuery find input type (but also for select)

You can do this (fiddle here), make some sort of easy to use plugin:

$.fn.getType = function(){ return this[0].tagName == "INPUT" ? this[0].type.toLowerCase() : this[0].tagName.toLowerCase(); }

And use it like this

$(".element").getType(); // Will return radio, text, checkbox, select, textarea, etc (also DIV, SPAN, all element types)
$(".elList").getType(); // Gets the first element's type

Which will get the type of the first element which is selected.

Other info

If you just want to have some selectors you can use this:

$("input:text, input:radio, select");

Or select all form controls (more info):

$(":input") // can return all form types