Find the element before and after a specific element with pure javascript

Question

Having a list with links like this:

<ul>     <li><a href="#">First tab</a></li>     <li><a href="#">Second tab</a></li>     <li class="active"><a href="#">Active tab</a></li>     <li><a href="#">Fourth tab</a></li>     <li><a href="#">Fifth tab</a></li> </ul> 

How can be found element before and after the active tab? (In this case, the second and fourth tab).

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I am looking for solution in pure JavaScript only, as jQuery solution is here.

Note: nextElementSibling and previousElementSibling are not supported by IE8 and FF3, so please post solutions that would be supported by those browsers as well. Thank you.

Answer 1

Assuming your <ul> element is called element:

var active, prev, next; active = prev = next = element.querySelector('.active');  do prev = prev.previousSibling; while(prev && prev.nodeType !== 1); do next = next.nextSibling;     while(next && next.nodeType !== 1); 

This will work in Internet Explorer 8. If you're only worried about modern browsers:

var active = element.querySelector('.active'); var prev = active.previousElementSibling; var next = active.nextElementSibling;