2

Given this simple code

<!Doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Start Here</title>
</head>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript">
document.write("<h1>Start Here!</h1>");
</script>
</body>
</html>

I get lots of empty text nodes in IE9 as follows.

Image

After going through similiar questions, I tried the following.

  • Closing all tags.
  • Removing all white spaces.
  • Using UTF without BOM
  • EOL = unix format

It does not help. Nothing serious bur would like to know why is this.

Jawad
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1 Answers1

4

All characters, including line breaks, generate text nodes.

If you remove the line breaks, the empty text nodes will disappear. For instance changing from

<head>
<title>Start Here</title>

to

<head><title>Start Here</title>

will remove the empty text node from the beginning of the head block.

As far as I know, you can't control the visibility of empty text nodes in IE9 developer toolbar either. As a workaround you could install and use Firebug Lite that gives you a cleaner tree representation of the elements:

Firebug Lite in IE9

Please note that the empty text nodes are just a normal part of your document's structure and nothing you should be worrying about -- just be aware that even line breaks generate them.

jsalonen
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  • Right. Any way to remove/delete/hide them? – Jawad Oct 18 '12 at 07:45
  • Right again. But does not that make the code difficult to read? – Jawad Oct 18 '12 at 07:56
  • If you want to remove the empty text nodes that's the only we you really can do that. If you just want to hide them from your developer toolbar view then sadly I think that IE9 devtools don't have that option. – jsalonen Oct 18 '12 at 07:58