Can't select HTML5 element's children in IE8 with jQuery selector

Question

I found some posts with similar issues, but this is something different. I upgraded from jQuery 1.4 to 1.4.2 after I read another post, but the problem still presents itself

Answer 1

is an HTML5 element not supported in IE8, you'll have issues using it as an element, including finding children beneath it. It isn't a jQuery problem, it's a basic DOM problem, here's a demonstration:

All I'm doing is giving the element an ID to simplify things:

Then try and get it's children:

document.getElementById('btn').children.length

This gets you a 2 in HTML5 browsers, an 0 in IE.