title: getAttribute in Firefox 3.5 and IE8 doesn't work how it used to
body: <p>I am creating a javascript function that would find an anchor in a page (specifically with , not an id) and then iterate through the parents of it until it reached one that contains a certain class. I used the following code and it works fine in Firefox 3.0 but fails at getAttribute in both Firefox 3.5 and Internet Explorer 8.</p>
  
  <pre><code>var tab = document.getElementsByName(headerName).item(0);
  
  while (tab.getAttribute('class') != 'card') {
      tab = tab.parentNode;
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I know this would be easy in jQuery but I am highly constrained. How has getAttribute been changed in these new browsers and what can I do to fix this?</p>