Best way to get child nodes in JavaScript

The contains all nodes, including text nodes consisting entirely of whitespace

The cross browser way to do is to use to get , then make an array of all nodes with ELEMENT_NODE.

/** 
* Return direct children elements. 
* * @param {HTMLElement} 
* @return {Array}
*/

function elementChildren (el){

  var childNodes = el.childNodes, children =[], i = childNodes.length;

  while(i--){

    if(childNodes[i].nodeType ==1){ 
        children.unshift(childNodes[i]);
    }

  }

  return children;
}

Thanks