Why doesn't the jQuery .html() method work with custom tags in IE8?

Question

I have the following html code:

<mytag>
      Just Some Text
</mytag> 

And I have this jQuery command

$('mytag').each(function () { alert($(this).html()); });

In all browsers except IE I'm getting the inner HTML, in IE I'm not. Anyone can shed any light on this mystery? I've tested this with IE8, Mozilla, Opera, Chrome and Safari

Answer 1

Because Internet Explorer doesn't error correct for that particular type of invalid HTML in the same way that the other browsers you have tested the code with do.

I would imagine that you can hack around it (it works for applying CSS) with:

document.createElement('mytag')

… but you would be better off writing HTML (or writing XML and serving it as application/xml).