Is it expected that jQuery $('span').html() turns XHTML br tag to html syntax?

Question

If I have a span tag like this:

 Hi
SecondLine

And I call this jQuery function:

 var ht         


        

Answer 1

You aren't actually using XML, so it makes sense that the serialization doesn't use the XML syntax. See also Ian Hickson's essay about sending XHTML as HTML.

Answer 2

All browsers normalize HTML code while building their DOM tree. So, javascript gains access to already normalized DOM. With all tags properly closed and such.

Answer 3

It doesn't. It just modifies the browser DOM.

It is up to the browser to serialise the DOM to HTML or XHTML as it desires when using innerHTML. Different browsers act differently.