title: jQuery, XML as a String, and IE
body: <p>I just inherited a project where the main navigation menu is currently Flash. They asked if I could switch it to javascript, so I agreed to give it a shot. The navigation structure itself is dynamically generated on the server and new nodes are picked via an ajax call. The return is all XML. </p>
  
  <p>To prevent delays on initial load, the server sends down the xml from a first call for the current page into a textarea.</p>
  
  <p>Firefox and Chrome can pull that xml and manipulate it in jQuery just fine. IE, however, chokes out. I know that IE doesn't play well if the MIME type isn't set, but as the server is essentially off limits, I need to find a way around this.</p>
  
  <p>An example of the xml stored in the textarea would be something like:</p>
  
  <p><code>
  &lt;nav&gt;
      &lt;item name='Link 1' url='http://www.somesite.com' img='/path/to/image.png' /&gt;
      &lt;item name='Link 2' url='http://www.somesite.com' img='/path/to/image.png' /&gt;
  &lt;/nav&gt;
  </code></p>
  
  <p>I am grabbing the contents using the .val() method, which works in everything other than IE. I have banged my head for awhile on this. Any help?</p>