Comments on: innerHTML vs. DOM = pot noodles vs. real cooking

By: Craig

Craig — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:41:00 +0000

You might be interested in a technique I’ve devised as an alternative to innerHTML. It still allows you to pass an HTML string, but your code is validated and inserted into the DOM using safe W3C methods. It uses XML and only requires 50 lines of code.

For details, please visit:
http://www.optimalworks.net/blog/2007/web-development/javascript/innerhtml-alternative

By: joe

joe — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 07:20:10 +0000

innerHTML is like paying for a hooker and DOM is like taking out a chick and trying to score.

By: Richard Marr

Richard Marr — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:50:23 +0000

I’ve been working on a big Javascript app for a major software company for about a year and a half. I found DOM methods to be slow and make my code less readable.

I really say this is yet another case where people should just use the right tool for the right job, but instead start talking about which is “right” and which is “wrong”.

By: Uli

Uli — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 02:05:49 +0000

Chris,
greetings. I was looking at your fabulous library of scripts, and I was wondering if it were ok to use one of yours for one of my clients. She’s planning to sell stuff on her site, and I thought that your “YADM - Yet Another Dynamic Menu” would make for a nice navigation. As your copyright states, you would like to be asked when using your scripts for a commercial website.

As a webdesigner, I am always trying to showcase nice work where appropriate, so if it is ok by you, I would highlight your menu work on my website (iserlohdesign.com), so that other designers become aware of your work. Again, I am looking to use your script on a single site for a single client. thanks.

Uli

By: Yves Gablin

Yves Gablin — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 13:06:35 +0000

This is an interesting topic :)
As a way to teach myself, I tried and created a simple “WYSIWYG” textarea editor (bold, italic…) in Javascript, and I worked hard to:
- only use the DOM,
- only use the resources of the current document (no external CSS, no external HTML page, and so on).

Conclusions:
- Even though it is possible not to use external resources, an IFrame sadly has to be created.
- To initialize the editor contents with the textarea contents, or put it back into the textarea, innerHtml and document.write() have to be used.

Those technologies are just too young in this area, and to date, building a whole stylesheet and content from the ground up, is impossible using only the DOM.

This apart, I’m rather satisfied with what I did: all else is 100% DOM.

Yves.