IE 6/7 clone tainting URLs

[georgem]

This issue was discovered while using the jQuery ConvertTo plugin. ​http://plugins.jquery.com/project/convertTo

Looking closely at

var contents = $this.html();
var source = $("<div></div>").append($this.clone(true)).html().replace(contents, "");

Here is the contents of each variable

var contents

<DIV style="WIDTH: 313px; HEIGHT: 157px; OVERFLOW: hidden" id=cta_key_home_cta_1 class=cta wc:delay="5"><A href="/photos/"><IMG alt=home_cta_1 src="/media/ctas/home-cta1_.jpg"></A> 
<DIV class=cta_item hidden="true" wc:link="/photos/" wc:image="/media/ctas/home-cta1_.jpg" wc:swf=""></DIV>
<DIV class=cta_item hidden="true" wc:link="/photos/" wc:image="/media/ctas/home-cta2__.jpg" wc:swf=""></DIV>
<DIV class=cta_item hidden="true" wc:link="/photos/" wc:image="/media/ctas/home-cta3__.jpg" wc:swf=""></DIV></DIV>
<DIV style="WIDTH: 313px; HEIGHT: 157px; OVERFLOW: hidden" id=cta_key_home_cta_2 class=cta wc:delay="5"><A href="/locator/"><IMG alt=home_cta_2 src="/media/ctas/home-cta2_.jpg"></A> 
<DIV class=cta_item hidden="true" wc:link="/locator/" wc:image="/media/ctas/home-cta2_.jpg" wc:swf=""></DIV></DIV>
<DIV style="WIDTH: 313px; HEIGHT: 157px; OVERFLOW: hidden" id=cta_key_home_cta_3 class=cta wc:delay="5"><A href="/blog/"><IMG alt=home_cta_3 src="/media/ctas/home-cta3_.jpg"></A> 
<DIV class=cta_item hidden="true" wc:link="/blog/" wc:image="/media/ctas/home-cta3_.jpg" wc:swf=""></DIV></DIV>

var source

<DIV id=homectas class="container something" cellpadding="0" cellSpacing="0">
<DIV style="WIDTH: 313px; HEIGHT: 157px; OVERFLOW: hidden" id=cta_key_home_cta_1 class=cta wc:delay="5"><A href="http://192.168.1.176:8000/photos/"><IMG alt=home_cta_1 src="http://192.168.1.176:8000/media/ctas/home-cta1_.jpg"></A> 
<DIV class=cta_item hidden="true" wc:link="/photos/" wc:image="/media/ctas/home-cta1_.jpg" wc:swf=""></DIV>
<DIV class=cta_item hidden="true" wc:link="/photos/" wc:image="/media/ctas/home-cta2__.jpg" wc:swf=""></DIV>
<DIV class=cta_item hidden="true" wc:link="/photos/" wc:image="/media/ctas/home-cta3__.jpg" wc:swf=""></DIV></DIV>
<DIV style="WIDTH: 313px; HEIGHT: 157px; OVERFLOW: hidden" id=cta_key_home_cta_2 class=cta wc:delay="5"><A href="http://192.168.1.176:8000/locator/"><IMG alt=home_cta_2 src="http://192.168.1.176:8000/media/ctas/home-cta2_.jpg"></A> 
<DIV class=cta_item hidden="true" wc:link="/locator/" wc:image="/media/ctas/home-cta2_.jpg" wc:swf=""></DIV></DIV>
<DIV style="WIDTH: 313px; HEIGHT: 157px; OVERFLOW: hidden" id=cta_key_home_cta_3 class=cta wc:delay="5"><A href="http://192.168.1.176:8000/blog/"><IMG alt=home_cta_3 src="http://192.168.1.176:8000/media/ctas/home-cta3_.jpg"></A> 
<DIV class=cta_item hidden="true" wc:link="/blog/" wc:image="/media/ctas/home-cta3_.jpg" wc:swf=""></DIV></DIV></DIV>

Looking through the html you can see that all the src and href attributes have changed and now include the full URL. This then breaks the ability to replace not to mention returns unexpected results compared to every other browser.

[georgem]

var source (Expected result)

<DIV id=homectas class="container something" cellpadding="0" cellSpacing="0"></DIV>

[dmethvin]

Unfortunately, IE expands the URL when it serializes HTML inside .clone(). This issue has been identified before and closed as wontfix because it doesn't have a reasonable solution.

​http://github.com/jquery/jquery/blob/master/src/manipulation.js#L149

If you can think of a solution let us know.