I wanted to know if there\'s any way I could output HTML after extracting contents() and performing a replace on all of the text-nodes in it.
contents()
jsFiddle:
If I'm understanding you correctly, I believe this will do:
$('#msg').contents().each(function() { if(this.nodeType == 3) { var u = this.nodeValue; var reg = /_link_/g; $(this).replaceWith(u.replace(reg,'Google')); } });
http://jsfiddle.net/t8835/2/