Issues with HTML entity references and Javascript?

[TAL651]

I'm having trouble displaying entity references (i.e. >, <, etc). I'll show the code first, then ask my question. This code makes sub items on a menu appear or disappear. The HTML isn't giving me issues, so I'm only posting the javascript for now:

Javascript code:

function expandcollapseBGrows(anchor) {
var span = document.getElementById("BGrows");
span.style.display = (span.style.display=='block')?'none':'block';
anchor.innerHTML = (anchor.innerHTML=='hide')?'»':'hide';
}
 

Now, here's my question. This code currently works - when I click on the hide link, my subitems are hidden and I see a right angle quote. When I click on the right angle quote, my subitems appear, and my link changes to "hide."

If I replace "hide" with "&laquo;" in the script, though, I run into a problem. Everything still appears and disappears as it should. However, my link, instead of changing from a right angle quote to a left angle quote, now just changes to a left angle quote, and then stays that way. It doesn't change back to a right angle quote.

This seems strange, since it switches back and forth without problems if it is text. For some reason, though, entity references seem to throw it off.

[acoder]

I'm not sure, but it might be converting it to Ascii or something. You may need to look at charCodeAt and parse the string.