Change text color with Javascript?

You set the style per element and not by its content:

function init() { 
  document.getElementById("about").style.color = 'blue';
}

With innerHTML you get/set the content of an element. So if you would want to modify your title, innerHTML would be the way to go.

In your case, however, you just want to modify a property of the element (change the color of the text inside it), so you address the style property of the element itself.

Try below code:

$(document).ready(function(){
$('#about').css({'background-color':'black'});    
});

http://jsfiddle.net/jPCFC/

use ONLY

function init() { 
    about = document.getElementById("about");
    about.style.color = 'blue';
}

.innerHTML() sets or gets the HTML syntax describing the element's descendants., All you need is an object here.

Demo