What's IE take on HTMLDocument and HTMLElement

dom, html, internet-explorer, javascript

Solution

In IE8 you have to use the `Element` and `HTMLDocument` classes. In IE7... nothing, because IE7 is terrible for standards. You have to rely on jQuery or other frameworks that wrap DOM elements.

In my own framework I make this simple check:

var elementPrototype = typeof HTMLElement !== "undefined"
        ? HTMLElement.prototype : Element.prototype;

Mind you that it's not a framework for IE7 and lower.

Problem

Within javascript's scope, referring to `HTMLDocument` or `HTMLElement` raises error on IE8. The error I get is "HTMLElement is undefined". What is the way to have JS interacting with native DOM object of this browser?

Original source