Javascript compatibility problems IE - Firefox - Safari: Javascript, Internet explorer, firefox, safari, Netscape

Javascript compatibility problems IE - Firefox - Safari

I have a page that works in Internet Explorer (various versions) but does not work in Firefox or Safari.
There are two problems (so far)..
1) My code contains input boxes that are defined as
<input type="file" name="xx" style="display:inline-block;width:645px;" />
in IE, I get a 645px text box and a browse button.
in Safari I get just a Browse button (zero length text )
in Firefox I get a short box (about 100px) and a browse button

2. I need to remove a span. I use
var spans=elem.getElementsByTagName('SPAN');
var p = spans(0).parentNode
p.removeChild(spans(0));
This works in IE but hangs in Firefox and Safari

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1) Styling of an <input type="file"> is an extremely complex procedure. Browsers do not allow you to do much with them as security precautions. However, there is a way if you want to take the time an expend the effort to do so. I generally try to avoid it: http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/inputfile.html

2) You have a combination of errors here. First "span" should be lower case, I believe, at least I always to this in lower case and it works. Second it should be "spans[0]" as you are accessing an element of an array. Why your code works in IE and not FF I cannot say, but the attached example works in both FF and IE. I cannot test in Safari here, but if it works in both of the others is should??? work in Safari.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
    <title>Untitled Document</title>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      function removeSpan() {
        var elem = document.getElementById('parentDiv');
        var spans = elem.getElementsByTagName('span');
        var p = spans[0].parentNode;
        p.removeChild(spans[0]);
      }
    </script>
  </head>
  <body onload="removeSpan();">
    <div id="parentDiv">
      <p>Pareagraph with: <span>Span1</span></p>
      <p>Pareagraph with: <span>Span2</span></p>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

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Javascript compatibility problems IE - Firefox - Safari

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