Comments on: JavaScript innerText and textContent

By: RLM

RLM — Thu, 05 May 2011 14:32:42 +0000

If you checkout the YUI.dom implementation they go with this. Saves having to run checks each time the function is called.

var getText = (document.documentElement.textContent !== undefined)
? function(elem) { // textContent Implementation here }
: function(elem) { // innerText Implementation here }

By: ktjrdn

ktjrdn — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:50:36 +0000

I’mlearning here, so don’t laugh at me if this is a dumb question. But is there any reason you couldn’t just do:

var elem = document.getElementById(’id’);
elem.textContent = value;
elem.innerText = value;

Is there a need to explicitly check the browser support instead of just setting them both?

By: Cody Taylor

Cody Taylor — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:47:43 +0000

@Dave Thanks for the tip. I updated the post accordingly.

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:10:59 +0000

“innerText” has line breaks base on HTML semantics, but no “textContent”.

http://ccapeng.blogspot.com/2006/01/firefox-innertext.html

By: Jason Davis

Jason Davis — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:49:47 +0000

Of course, Mozilla also lets you do this:

HTMLElement.prototype.__defineGetter__("innerText", function() {
    return this.textContent;
});
HTMLElement.prototype.__defineSetter__("innerText", function(val) {
    return this.textContent = val;
});

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:20:59 +0000

That code won’t work for IE8, it will return undefined for elements that have an empty string for their text. Instead, use this:

var message = elem.innerText || elem.textContent || “”;

or use jQuery.

By: Cody Taylor

Cody Taylor — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:12:35 +0000

Thanks for the heads up. Fixed the post. Glad to hear that FireFox is following the standards.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:04:37 +0000

textContent is the standard, not innerText. What DOM standard are you reading?

http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-DOM-Level-3-Core-20040407/core.html#Node3-textContent

Regardless, still a problem that needs solving for cross-browser compatibility.

By: Cody Taylor (codytaylor) 's status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-09 15:27:51 UTC - Identi.ca

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:28:03 +0000

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