I have been using elem.removeChild() to remove elements from my document, but saving a JavaScript reference to that element, so that I can add them back when appropriate. Works just fine in Firefox and Chrome.
Now I notice that that on IE7, those elements get destroyed in the process, having all their children removed. When I add them back to the same parent element, they are the same type of element and have retained things like their class name, but they have no children elements.
Is this expected behavior? I know I can change my app to do things differently, but it would take a good couple hours of reworking and I’d obviously like to avoid that. I’ve always assumed that it is ok to remove elements, either by using removeChild() or by setting the parent’s innerHTML to an empty string, and as long as I had a reference to the element (i.e. a variable points to the element, not just an element id), it was ok to add and remove elements freely without having the element messed up.
Is this a bug with IE, am I somehow confused and something else is going on, or is this known and expected behavior?
The spec for removeChild doesn’t explicitly say that the children of the node being removed should be kept along with that node, although to me it seems logical that they should and obviously that is what the FF and Chrome developers decided too. I don’t know what the spec says to do if the parent’s innerHTML is set to an empty string, but in my opinion that way is a bit like saying “wipe over whatever was there” so in that case I think it is reasonable for the browser to throw away everything that was in that innerHTML even if there were references in code to some of the removed elements.