Robert’s talk » We all love innerHTML

Robert’s talk » We all love innerHTML: "We all love innerHTML
Published on Thursday, April 20th, 2006

This article is co-written with Anne van Kesteren, W3C Member and contributor to the WHATWG and Opera specifications, R&D and QA person.

When developing a web page, DOM methods are generally the way to go when dynamically altering elements’ attributes and performing other operations. But what about adding content to a web page in the most efficient manner, both code- and performance wise? We claim that innerHTML is unmatched by any DOM methods available and that it is in most, if not all, situations the best option."

I have to say that innerHTML is easy to use - just a quick little one-liner, but I usually use DOM methods, as I think nthey are cleaner. I just with the DOM methods were faster!

The fact that innerHTML is quicker becomes important the more frequently it is used, in AJAX applications that may become more important.