IE8 polyfill/shim for supporting textContent (vs innerText) so that textContent is universally accessible. Can be embedded as a standalone script in a `[if lte IE 8]` embed.

textContentPolyfill.js

if (Object.defineProperty && Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor && Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(Element.prototype, "textContent") && !Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(Element.prototype, "textContent").get) {
	(function() {
		var innerText = Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(Element.prototype, "innerText");
		Object.defineProperty(Element.prototype, "textContent",
			{
				get: function() {
					return innerText.get.call(this);
				},
				set: function(s) {
					return innerText.set.call(this, s);
				}
			}
		);
	})();
}

Note that innerText will not return the text of an element that is hidden, which is the main behavioral problem with innerText.

For those interested, I put together a more complete shim, which addresses some of the more subtle problems of the "innerText substitution" solution. It's included in aight. Enjoy!

Hi,
I've some problems using this polyfill... it seems that it causes problem with jQuery append\prepend functions.... is it possible?

@enricosoft: Not surprising. I haven’t looked into it but it’s possible that jQuery modifies its behaviour depending on whether textContent exists. That shouldn’t matter, but sometimes people use one test to imply another (if it has textContent, then maybe it also has …). Alternatively, maybe this polyfill is missing something subtle.