Okay I have read and reread http://www.learningjquery.com/2006/11/how-to-get-anything-you-want-part-1
and http://www.learningjquery.com/2006/12/how-to-get-anything-you-want-part-2 and still cannot figure out how to grab all the text (not the markup) on a page. I am toying with the Google Translation API and am attempting to parse all text, translate, and put it back. I have the looping logic (and the 500 char limit issue with Google) sorted out, but I can't get the fundamental part down...GRABBING ALL THE TEXT. So let's say you have markup like so <ul> <li><a href=somelink>blabh blah 1</a></li> <li><a href=somelink>blabh blah 2</a></li> <li><a href=somelink>blabh blah 3</a></li> </ul> and even <h1>some heading</h1> and <p>Some paragraph text</p> etc. etc. I want to be able to grab all the text and manipulate it. I've tried $("#mainContainerDiv *").each(...some function....), but this crashed the system. I would like to do something like this: $("#mainContainerDiv *.text".each(....some function...), but this clearly won't work. Any help is greatly appreciated.