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Start your free trialjohn larson
16,594 PointsinnerText vs innerHTML
As I was looking this up I came across someone saying innerText is not supported across all browsers and that it automatically decodes html? I'm thinking that it does not automatically decode html might be why we use it in this scenario (generating html form fields with js) although not being supported across all browsers has me curious.
2 Answers
Steven Parker
231,269 PointsThat may be old advice. According to Can I Use?, innerText is supported in all common browsers.
There's also another similar property named textContent. The choice of which to use should be based on function, since they do different things. For example, using this code:
<p id="test"> This element contains <span>an inner span</span>. </p>
The values of these properties of the "test" paragraph will be:
innerText: "This element contains an inner span."
Just the text, trimmed and space-collapsed.
innerHtml: " This element
contains <span>an inner span</span>. "
All spacing and inner element tags.
textContent: " This element
contains an inner span. "
Spacing, but no tags.
Jacob Mishkin
23,118 PointsUnlike innerText, though, innerHTML lets you work with HTML rich text and doesn't automatically encode and decode text. In other words, innerText retrieves and sets the content of the tag as plain text, whereas innerHTML retrieves and sets the same content but in HTML format.
john larson
16,594 PointsThank you Jacob
john larson
16,594 Pointsjohn larson
16,594 PointsThanks Steve