You'll have to post some code to be certain as to why your implementation was not working, but you should view the jQuery source for examples of how to use .on() and .live()
<div id="parent">
<a href="#" id="anchor">Click Me</a>
</div>
$('#anchor').live('click',function() { }):
$('#parent').on('click','#anchor',function() { });
$('#anchor').on('click',function() { });
The .live() event listener is added to the document element so that the callback will be fired as long as the event bubbles all the way up to the document element
In the second example ( $('#parent').on() ), the event listener is added to the parent element and is fired every time a click event bubbles up to #parent and comes from (or interacts with along the way) an element named #anchor
The third example ( $('#anchor').on() ) adds the event listener directly to the anchor element itself and is the exact same as $('#anchor').bind('click',function() { });
The reason why .live() was introduced was so that if your page structure changes, event callbacks can still be fired because the event listener itself is attached to the document element.
You can use on in a similar method, but it has to be attached itself to an element that is not removed from the page - if that element is removed, then so are all the event listeners along with it.
http://api.jquery.com/on/
http://api.jquery.com/live/