Which is the correct or better way to create a new element with jQuery?

Question

Related to the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/10619477/1076753 to cleate an element is better to use

$(\"
\", {id: \"foo\", class: \"a\"});
         


        
      

Answer 1

With better or correct use in your case it depends on how frequently this code will appear in your page. @Quentin is correct in that there is only a two byte difference between the first and second option. Now if the code only appears a few times in the whole page then realistically unless you are recording a large amount of traffic on your server you will not see a significant difference between the two, on the other hand if you are running a medium to high traffic site or will be having a large number of instances of this javascript appearing on your page then the best option would be to go with option one as it is two bytes smaller and over a larger page with many instances of this code you will find measurable savings in the byte size of the page.

As for well formed tags for cross platform compatibility both the first and second options will result in the exact same end result in the browser so in your use case compatibility will not be affected by either option.

Based on these points I would suggest using option one as it provides the two byte advantage over option two, that is effectively the only difference between the two options in your use case.