ProcessingInstruction (W3C DOM Core object)
| Version | Depr. | Parent |
|---|---|---|
| DOM1 | No | Node |
| IE5.5+ | FF1.5+ | SA1.3+ | OP9.5+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buggy | Full | Full | Full |
Description
The
ProcessingInstruction interface inherits from Node, and represents an XML processing instruction.
A
ProcessingInstruction node cannot have children.
The XML Prolog at the top of an XML document is not a processing instruction, even though it looks like one.
Compatibility
| Internet Explorer | Firefox | Safari | Opera | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.5 | 6.0 | 7.0 | 1.5 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 1.3 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 9.0 | 9.5 |
| Buggy | Buggy | Buggy | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Buggy | Full |
Internet Explorer and Opera
9.0 treat an XML Prolog as though it were a processing
instruction — it appears in the DOM as a
ProcessingInstruction node.
Since ProcessingInstruction is an XML
construct, it's only reasonable to judge its behavior in terms of XML
(either on HTML pages in XHTML mode1, or pure XML). The
behavioral variations of browsers in HTML mode2 are documented
here for interest and reference, but the support summary table above
does not consider this behavior (ie. if the interface works fully in
XML then it's considered to be fully supported, with no notes).
Internet Explorer 5.5 in HTML sees
processing instructions as Element nodes with the
name ! (exactly as it sees comments); consequently
it inherits from Node as an Element.
Internet Explorer 6 and 7 in HTML see
processing instructions (and XML Prologs) as Comment nodes3.
Firefox in HTML mode and Safari in HTML mode cannot see processing instructions at all.
Opera 9.5 in HTML mode still treats an
XML Prolog as a ProcessingInstruction node.
In this Section
Footnotes
1 On XHTML pages served as
application/xhtml+xml.
2 On XHTML or HTML
pages served as text/html.
3 IE6 ignores the first two characters in
the target name (for example, xm in
xml-stylesheet), as though they're assumed to have
been "--", like a normal comment, even though they
weren't. Likewise the last two characters, "? are
also missing.
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