That's true for IE, but not for good browsers. For firefox/safari/chrome it's negligable difference if not sometimes slightly faster to use the DOM methods. Al

That's true for IE, but not for good browsers. For firefox/safari/chrome it's negligable difference if not sometimes slightly faster to use the DOM methods. Also, using DOM methods allows you to easier attach listeners, save references to DOM elements for later updates/use etc. That means less getElementById()'s later. Writing HTML inside js code is just horrible (IMHO). Horrible ugly code. And obviously easier to have security issues if you're including non-sanitized user data. #6 is a horrible idea. As far as your JS code is concerned, HTML is a (horrible, ugly) serialization of the DOM. Manipulate the DOM programatically. Don't use HTML.