Question

if you try this:

var x = document.createElement("div");
x.appendChild(document.createTextNode("    te      st    ");
alert('-->' + x.innerHTML + '<--');

ie6-7-8 will alert

'te st '

ie9-10 and others browsers:

'    te      st    '

there is a way to fix this behavior in older IEs?

thank you

p.s. I don’t want to use < pre >

Answer 1

There’s no way to fix this in older IE if the white space is not rendered (using a <pre> element or CSS white-space: pre). Unrendered white space characters are simply not part of the DOM in those browsers.