what's the deal with span tag and tables tags?

[JehanNYNJ]

Does anyone know what is the way IE treats span tags(<span>) and table tags(<tr>, <td>)? Should the <span> tag be encolsed in tds and trs if it placed with other elements that are in a table? Can the span tag itself contain table tags within it?

I have some scripting code and when I wrap the span in table elements it does not find the html within the span. Here is an example....


<tr><td colspan="4" align="left"><span id="201294_38604_1">[some html here including tds and trs]</span></td></tr>

var span = document.getElementById(spanId);
alert("the value inside span is " + span.innerHTML); // this is blank

And if I do not wrap the span in table tags like so....

<span id="201294_38604_1">[some html here including tds and trs]</span>

It finds the html in the span. But when I clear the contents of the html and later try to put some other html in, I do not see the html on the screen.

Any help would be appericated.

[cmm]

What you speak of is invalid HTML in all browsers, not just IE. A td can only be nested inside a tr, and a tr can only be nested inside a table (or thead, tbody, tfoot, which must be then inside a table). You cannot directly put any elements other than table elements inside a table. Other elements can only go inside table cells (td). Whatever you are trying to accomplish can most certainly work with proper HTML.