DocumentFragment browser support

Question

Today I stumbled on createDocumentFragment. I was wondering if the DocumementFragment is supported, and how, on the different browsers, expecially IE series.

Anyone

Answer 1

In general it has always worked fine as per the DOM spec.

But don't expect non-standard extensions to work seamlessly... for example you can't set innerHTML on a DocumentFragment (which is a shame as it could have greatly improved insertion speed on some large pages).

Answer 2

Yep, it's fully supported in all modern browsers (including IE6).

See: http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/w3c_core.html#miscellaneous

Answer 3

         ╔═════════════════════════════════╗
         ║ document.createDocumentFragment ║
╔════════╬═════════════════════════════════╣
║ IE5    ║ true                            ║
║ IEM5.2 ║ true                            ║
║ IE5.5  ║ false                           ║
║ IE6+   ║ true                            ║
║ OPM6+  ║ true                            ║
║ OP7+   ║ true                            ║
║ N6+    ║ true                            ║
║ KQ     ║ true                            ║
╚════════╩═════════════════════════════════╝

Beware though, existence doesn't always entails implementation.

Gotchas

• IE Mac 5.2 on Mac cannot add text nodes to document fragments, nor append the fragment's contents to a document.
• Opera 7.2 creates the fragment but does not apply styles to the created elements.