How does javascript manage to generate different html in different browsers?

[Athanasopolous]

How does javascript manage to generate different html in different browsers?

I am in the process of trying to make my own meta search engine. So I looked into the html source from a google search. In IE, (when I click to view the source) the search results do not appear. But in Frefox, the source text is dfferent and more complete. When I use Firefox to "view page source", the search result hyperlinks are there with their entire content.

This is suprising and not what I would expect. I thought that in order to have different html in different browsers, there had to be a back end pushing the different content based on either ASP or PHP. What is the technology that google is using?

Maybe it is just the way that the browser is displaying the html tags. Could this have something to do with "outerHTML" and, if so, how do I programatically use it?

 

[jpadie]

i suspect one browser is showing the source as rendered from the http request and the other (more complete) is showing the source as currently rendered on the screen (the search results having been retrieved by js).

try turning off javascript on both browsers and rechecking the source. apart from potential styling differences served as a result of browser sniffing server side, i suspect the source will look similar.