At least I can answer my own question #1 now: disabled-attribute needs to be removed if it shouldn't be applied, setting it to blank does not help. So my code was changed to:
function SetDeleteStatus() { var foo="disabled"; $("#gvFolderItems input:checkbox").attr("checked",function() {if (this.checked) {foo="";} } ) if (foo=="") { // $("#DeleteButton").removeAttribute("disabled"); // ^^^^ error: object does not support selected property or method! document.getElementById("DeleteButton").removeAttribute("disabled"); } else { document.getElementById("DeleteButton").setAttribute("disabled","disabled"); } alert("deletebutton=" + foo); } There was a surprise along the way, as $("#DeleteButton") led to an error "Object does not supported property or method" whereas it works fine with document.getElementById - I thought the two were interchangeable...?