$.getScript, but for stylesheets in jQuery?

you can use same method $.getScript to "download" style sheet, since $.getScript actually is just another HTTP request. but it will be a bit wired since css is not executable.

CSS is not a script, so you dont have to "execute" it in the sense of script execution.

Basically a <link> tag created on the fly and appended to the header should suffice, like

$('<link/>', {
   rel: 'stylesheet',
   type: 'text/css',
   href: 'path_to_the.css'
}).appendTo('head');

or

var linkElem = document.createElement('link');
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(linkElem);
linkElem.rel = 'stylesheet';
linkElem.type = 'text/css';
linkElem.href = 'path_to_the.css';

if you want to do it without jQuery.

The browser will respond to the change in the DOM and update your page layout accordingly.

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EDIT:

I have read that old Internet Explorer has trouble with this, and you might need to do it like in answer to make it work:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/2685639/618206

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EDIT2:

Reading the file content and putting it inline (between <style> tags) is also a valid solution, but that way the CSS will not be cached by the browser.

I have created an alternative to $.getScript that handles stylesheets. I called it $.getStylesheet for obvious reasons.

It implements the $.Deferred object, which means you can chain things like so:

$.when($.getStylesheet('css/main.css'), $.getScript('js/main.js'))
.then(function () {
  console.log('the css and js loaded successfully and are both ready');
}, function () {
  console.log('an error occurred somewhere');
});

Here is the little function for $.getStylesheet. It is just hosted on Github gist, so I can update it if I need to.