Does Element.getAttribute() work in IE7 with unknown-to-IE attributes?

I'm trying to add event rich snippets to my site so that Google can know about the events. Then, leading to the cause of my question, I want to use the time data to do some various Javascript operations. I am usi开发者_Python百科ng the microdata approach Google outlines in the first link, but I am using span elements instead of time ones, since IE 7 (and 8) will treat the unknown time element as an inline element and I'd rather not use the HTML5 shiv if not absolutely necessary.

I am able to retrieve all the appropriate time spans (using jQuery("span[itemprop=startDate]")). However, in IE7 (and not in IE8 or FF or the WebKit-based browsers) I cannot get the 'datetime' attribute that I know each span has. It doesn't matter whether I use the native getAttribute() method or jQuery's attr(), I always get null back.

Any idea why and how I can work around this? Thanks!

Update: I have added a simple example. In Chrome I get alert that say 'datetime via DOM methods is: 2010-11-25' and 'datetime jQuery is: 2010-11-25' but in IE7 I get 'datetime via DOM methods is: null' and 'datetime via jQuery is: undefined'.

It does, at least for div and b elements. Oddly it doesn't seem to with a span. So, try using div instead.