On Sep 3, 6:55 am, "Rick Faircloth" <r...@whitestonemedia.com> wrote:
> I read that in an article dated October 17, 2008, that it was not possible
> to change the actual
>
> HTML in the DOM
There is no "HTML in the DOM". HTML is used to create a DOM.
> of the "value" attribute of a text input using
> $(this).val('myNewValue');
Because that changes the DOM value property, not the HTML value
attribute.
The HTML value attribute (if present) is used to set the DOM
defaultValue property and provide an initial value for the value
property. User initiated changes to the input's value will change the
DOM value property. Setting the value property will change the
displayed value. If the input is in a form and the form is submitted,
the value of the value property is submitted (assuming the input is
successful).
The defaultValue is used to set the value of the input if the form's
reset method is called and can be changed by assigning a new value to
it programmatically.
The HTML attribute value can be changed using setAttribute.
There is no specification for how to generate HTML from a DOM, what
you'll get is dependent on the browser and the method or tool (e.g.
the browser-dependent innerHTML property[1])
Using innerHTML as the tool to convert DOM to HTML, it can be seen
that in IE changes to the element's value property are reflected in
the value attribute but not in Firefox. Other tools may have different
results. If you want consistent behaviour in that regard, do the DOM
to HTML transformation yourself.
> My experiments just now bear this out.
>
> Is this still true? The writer of the article developed a work-around using
> a hidden input and
>
> manipulating its value with a rel to the original input. Is this still the
> best way?
If you want to reliably set the HTML attribute value, use setAttribute
as it is specified as doing that (and realise that setAttribute is
broken in IE in places).
1. innerHTML is a widely copied IE proprietary property that has no
public specification and is known to be implemented differently in
different browsers.
--
Rob
