It isn't possible to insert tags, or partial tags, into the DOM. All you can
insert into the DOM is DOM nodes, which by definition always follow the
proper tree structure.
'<ul></ul>' is a complete tag with begin and end, and $('<ul></ul>') results
in a UL element which you can insert into the DOM.
'</ul><ul>' is fragments of two different tags. There is no way to represent
this as a DOM element, but the browser will do its best to turn it into one
- and it will certainly not do what you expect.
Do you have any control over the HTML code that you're operating on? It
sounds like you may not - otherwise you would do this on the server.
To do this on the client, you basically need to rebuild the series of UL/LI
elements that you want, and then replace the original UL with that. You
could do that either with DOM manipulation or by building up a string of
HTML as Kit mentioned. (String manipulation can be much faster than DOM
manipulation - but if you have event handlers on the UL or LI items they
would be lost.)
-Mike
> I have a rather long unordered list with about hundred items inside.
> each is wrapped in <li>...</li>
> I want to split this list into several small lists, with,
> say, 10 items each.
> to do that I have this code:
>
> checkvar = 1;
> $('#right ul li').each(function(){
> if( checkvar%10 == 0){
> $(this).after('</ul><ul>');
> }
> checkvar++;
> });
>
> basically this works, but somehow jQuery fixes the order of
> the inserted '</ul><ul>' to '<ul></ul>'.
> interestingly, if I try to put 'zzz aaa', I get 'zzz aaa' as expected.
> The moment tag-brackets are used (even with '<zzz> <aaa>' I
> will get '<aaa> <zzz>' in the result.
>
> Any suggestions whats happening here?
