Legacy String Methods for Generating HTML

By  on  

I'm always really excited to see new methods on JavaScript primitives. These additions are acknowledgement that the language needs to evolve and that we're doing exciting new things. That being said, I somehow just discovered some legacy String methods that you probably shouldn't use but have existed forever. Let's take a look!

These legacy string methods take a basic string of text and wrap it in a HTML tag of the same name:

"Hello".big() // "<big>Hello</big>"
"Hello".blink() // "<blink>Hello</blink>"
"Hello".bold() // "<b>Hello</b>"
"Hello".italics() // "<i>Hello</i>"
"Hello".link("https://davidwalsh.name") // "<a href="https://davidwalsh.name">Hello</a>"

Native prototypes don't usually remove methods and for good reason -- they can break websites! I'm shocked I didn't know about these methods before today. It's always fun to see relics of the web past though!

Recent Features

  • By
    Animated 3D Flipping Menu with CSS

    CSS animations aren't just for basic fades or sliding elements anymore -- CSS animations are capable of much more.  I've showed you how you can create an exploding logo (applied with JavaScript, but all animation is CSS), an animated Photo Stack, a sweet...

  • By
    JavaScript Promise API

    While synchronous code is easier to follow and debug, async is generally better for performance and flexibility. Why "hold up the show" when you can trigger numerous requests at once and then handle them when each is ready?  Promises are becoming a big part of the JavaScript world...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create a Twitter AJAX Button with MooTools, jQuery, or Dojo

    There's nothing like a subtle, slick website widget that effectively uses CSS and JavaScript to enhance the user experience.  Of course widgets like that take many hours to perfect, but it doesn't take long for that effort to be rewarded with above-average user retention and...

  • By
    Create a Simple Dojo Accordion

    Let's be honest:  even though we all giggle about how cheap of a thrill JavaScript accordions have become on the web, they remain an effective, useful widget.  Lots of content, small amount of space.  Dojo's Dijit library provides an incredibly simply method by which you can...

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!