[jQuery] Performance penalty for creating dom element from a string?

[thomasvsundert]

Hi,
the new documentation for jQuery 1.3 states that:

"To create a span use $("<span/>"). As of jQuery 1.3 this syntax is
completely equivalent to $(document.createElement("span"))."

First of all, what does this mean? What was the difference before?

My real question is, what is the performance penalty for using $("<div/
>") vs $(document.createElement("div"))

thanks,
Thomas