Professional JavaScript For Web Developers

Chapter 6
Method Description IE MOZ OP SAF
createEntity Creates an entity reference node – X – –
Reference(name) with the given name
createProcessing Creates a PI node with the – X – –
Instruction(target, given target and data
data)
createTextNode(text) Creates a text node containing text X X X X
IE = Internet Explorer 6 for Windows, MOZ = Mozilla 1.5 for all platforms, OP = Opera 7.5 for all platforms,
SAF = Safari 1.2 for MacOS.
The most commonly used methods are createDocumentFragment(), createElement(), and
createTextNode(); the other methods are either not useful (createComment()) or not supported by
enough browsers to be useful at this point in time.
createElement(), createTextNode(), appendChild()
Suppose you have the following HTML page:
createElement() Example
To this page, you want to add the following code using the DOM:
Hello World!
The createElement() and createTextNode() methods can be used to accomplish this. Here’s how.
The first thing to do is create the element:
var oP = document.createElement(“p”);
Second, create the text node:
var oText = document.createTextNode(“Hello World!”);
Next you need to add the text node to the element. To do this, you can use the appendChild() method,
which was briefly mentioned earlier in the chapter. The appendChild() method exists on every node
type and is used to add a given node to the end of another’s childNodes list. In this case, the text node
should be added to the element:
oP.appendChild(oText);
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