Javascript Removing Whitespace When It Shouldn't?

Answer 1

Edit: I am wrong, ignore me.

You can get a text node's nodeValue, which should correctly represent its whitespace.

Here is a function to recursively get the text within a given element (and it's library-safe, won't fail if you use something that modifies Array.prototype or whatever):

var textValue = function(element) {
    if(!element.hasOwnProperty('childNodes')) {
        return '';
    }
    var childNodes = element.childNodes, text = '', childNode;
    for(var i in childNodes) {
        if(childNodes.hasOwnProperty(i)) {
            childNode = childNodes[i];
            if(childNode.nodeType == 3) {
                text += childNode.nodeValue;
            } else {
                text += textValue(childNode);
            }
        }
    }
    return text;
};