Simple jQuery snippet not working in IE

Question

Instead of using jQuery all the time, I instead built a String and then tried to parse it to jQuery. However, on IE I got a weird error message for the following snippet. It works fine on Chrome.

$('<tr><td>a</td></tr>');

Using just this results in the following error message on IE:

Object doesn't support this property or method 'getElementsByTagName'

What's going on here? In Chrome, like I said, it works blissfully and just as I would expect, but IE refuses to understand it.

Any clues would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: Even this fails, is it just me having this problem?

$('<td>a</td>');

@alliswell: Doesn't that *select* `` and `` elements? I actually want to *create* one. — pimvdb, Mar 24 '11 at 20:31
ohh, my bad..anyway just for your reference i found few links [here](http://jquery-howto.blogspot.com/2009/02/add-table-row-using-jquery-and.html) and [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/171027/jquery-add-table-row). — indiPy, Mar 24 '11 at 20:35
What version of IE? also: http://api.jquery.com/jQuery#jQuery2 — thwd, Mar 24 '11 at 20:36
@alliswell: Your second link solved my problem - many thanks. — pimvdb, Mar 24 '11 at 20:40

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 24 '11 at 20:36

4

You could start with a <table> and .append('<tr>...</tr>') to it, or if it's still empty, use .html('<tr>...</tr>') to fill it.

answered Mar 24 '11 at 20:36

Matijs

3,118
2
29
41

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 24 '11 at 20:38

2

IE8 and under are very particular about TD and TR elements. I do not believe you can create a document fragment (which is what you are doing) containing these types of elements without a parent table element.

answered Mar 24 '11 at 20:38

Brandon

38,310
8
82
87

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 24 '11 at 20:26

1

Perhaps IE is looking for a top level <table> ... </table> to surround the tr and td?

answered Mar 24 '11 at 20:26

Jason Brant

182
1
11

Simple jQuery snippet not working in IE

3 Answers3