Remove all child elements of a DOM node in JavaScript

Question

How would I go about removing all of the child elements of a DOM node in JavaScript?

Say I have the following (ugly) HTML:

    &         


        

Answer 1

i saw people doing:

while (el.firstNode) {
    el.removeChild(el.firstNode);
}

then someone said using el.lastNode is faster

however I would think that this is the fastest:

var children = el.childNodes;
for (var i=children.length - 1; i>-1; i--) {
    el.removeNode(children[i]);
}

what do you think?

ps: this topic was a life saver for me. my firefox addon got rejected cuz i used innerHTML. Its been a habit for a long time. then i foudn this. and i actually noticed a speed difference. on load the innerhtml took awhile to update, however going by addElement its instant!