@David, the jQuery version was more of a POC – I only really use jQuery so I saw no need for a sans-jQuery version. But, those who ask shall receive … It now works with no dependencies – if jQuery is available it will still work as a plugin though. Check it out (same repo): http://github.com/jamespadolsey/satisfy/tree/master

@Pete, that’s pretty neat. I think it’d take a bit of getting used to, but at a first glance it looks like a very natural way of creating elements. I’m gonna have to try it out!

My version is slightly influenced by HAML, with divs as a default element type:

createElement( '#container' );
// div id="container" 
 
createElement( 'span.wrapper' );
// span class="wrapper" 
 
createElement( 'img src:path/here/img.png, alt:"this is art"' );
// img src="path/here/img.png" alt="this is art"

And also as branch builder, that returns an object of references:

createBranch(
  '#container',
    '#container-inner',
      [
       'h1 setText: "Hello world"',
       'p @:myPara, setHTML: "Blah"'
      ]	
  );
/*
{
  root: #container,
  div: [#container, #container-inner],
  h1: [h1],
  p: [p],
  myPara: p
}
*/

For complicated structures you can also nest branches without compromising the returned object.