title: jquery getting child element values
body: <p>This is a dumb question, but im stuck. Why does my first one work but not the other 3. From reading the docs, all 4 should do the job. I want to in a bigger use case get an element of a form, there could be other elements on the same page with same name inside other forms or in other divs, so the 4th option is what I really want to work. But I cant figure out why all these dont work.</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://jsfiddle.net/7vF5z/1/" rel="nofollow">http://jsfiddle.net/7vF5z/1/</a></p>
  
  <p>html:</p>
  
  <pre><code> &lt;form id="filter_form_id" name="filter_form" method="get" action="/retrieved_data_records"&gt;
  
   &lt;select id="brand_id" name="brands"&gt;
   &lt;option value="0"&gt;&lt;/option&gt;
   &lt;option value="143272526"&gt;Brand1&lt;/option&gt;
   &lt;option selected="selected" value="269998788"&gt;Brand2&lt;/option&gt;
   &lt;option value="330516076"&gt;Brand3&lt;/option&gt;
   &lt;option value="330516077"&gt;Brand4&lt;/option&gt;
  
   &lt;/select&gt;
  &lt;/form&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>js:</p>
  
  <pre><code> alert ("The val: " +  $('#brand_id').val() );    
   alert ("The val: " +  $('brands').val() );  
   alert ("The val: " +  $('#filter_form_id brands').val() );  
   alert ("The val: " +  $('#filter_form_id &gt; brands').val() );  
  </code></pre>
  
  <p></p>