fixed. I was working with a cloned element. I was doing $("#something").clone().appendTo("#someone"); then selecting the freshly cloned element and modifying it.
I learned that it is way better to work with variables. now my code looks like var $cloned = $("#something").clone(); $cloned.find("what I need").attr("name", new_name); ... $cloned.appendTo("#someone"); this works perfectly. I know it may sound quite noobish, ma I just wanted to share. And if you have further suggestions on optimization, they would be more than welcome :) thanks a lot to everybody andrea