What's the correct way to set an attribute on a DOM object?

Which of these is the correct way to set the className attribute, or are they both okay?

option 1:

var t = document.createElement("p");
t.className = "myclass";


option 2:

var t = document.createElement("p");
t.setAttribute("class","myclass");

Both are OK, but .className is more cross browser compatible. I'm not sure how far back support in Internet Explorer goes, but to be on the safe side I would generally stick to dot/square bracket syntax.

good to know. Thanks.

Never use setAttibute unless direct assignment fails, and the only time I have encountered that is when setting properties of an <embed> element.

Document objects returned by AJAX calls also use get-/setAttribute.