When working with the DOM, it is important to understand the difference between a node and an element.
A node refers to any object in the DOM, including:
- Elements like
<div>
or <h1>
.
- Text nodes, which represent the content inside elements.
- Comments, representing HTML comments (
<!-- -->
).
- Other node types, such as document fragments and attributes.
An element is a specific type of node that represents HTML elements, such as <div>
, <p>
, or <ul>
. Elements are a subset of nodes, meaning all elements are nodes, but not all nodes are elements.
ThechildNodes
property returns all nodes inside .container
, including text, elements, and comments, whereas the children
property returns only the HTML elements, ignoring text and comments.