does innerHTML work with XML Elements?

Question

According to JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: "Despite its name, innerHTML can be used with XML elements as well as HTML elements".

However, when I actually attempt to access the innerHTML property of an XML Element object, undefined is returned:

var xml = $.ajax({url: "test.xml", async: false}).responseXML.documentElement;
console.log(xml.innerHTML); // displays "undefined" in console log

What is the explanation for this behavior?

test.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<foo><bar>baz</bar></foo>

Answer 1

The earlier answers don't address the newer browsers that exist as of September 2014. When an XML document is created with:

var parser = new DOMParser(); 
var doc = parser.parseFromString(data, "text/xml");

where data is the XML document as a string, then the following are true:

• In Firefox 28, and Chrome 36, the nodes in doc have an innerHTML field that contains the XML serialization of the contents of the node.

• In IE 9, 10 and 11, Safari 7.0 and Opera 12, the nodes in doc have neither an innerHTML field nor an xml field. I was not able to identify something that could stand for these fields. There does not appear to be any other option than using XMLSerializer for these browsers.