new Element(tagName[, attributes])

• tagName (String) – The name of the HTML element to create.
• attributes (Object) – An optional group of attribute/value pairs to set on the element.

Creates an HTML element with tagName as the tag name, optionally with the given attributes. This can be markedly more concise than working directly with the DOM methods, and takes advantage of Prototype's workarounds for various browser issues with certain attributes:

Example

// The old way:
var a = document.createElement('a');
a.setAttribute('class', 'foo');
a.setAttribute('href', '/foo.html');
a.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Next page"));
 // The new way:
var a = new Element('a', { 'class': 'foo', href: '/foo.html' }).update("Next page");