Hi,

Consider the following HTML snippet:

<select name="s" id="s">
  <option value=""> </option>
</select>

Consider the following JavaScript snippet:

  var ohtml = '';

  ohtml += ('<option value="1">1</option>');
  ohtml += ('<option value="2">2</option>');
  ohtml += ('<option value="3">3</option>');
  
  ${'#s'}.empty().append( ohtml );

In certain conditions, this code fails in various version of IE:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/2040837/59087

Fix IE8 refresh bug (the values get set in the DOM, but the view for the drop-down does not refresh:

  ${'#s'}[0].options.length = 0;

Ideally, the jQuery empty() function would include code to set the length to 0. This would have saved some of my hair follicles.