This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since April 2018.
The Document.firstElementChild read-only property returns the document's first child Element, or null if there are no child elements.
For HTML documents, this is usually the only child, the root <html> element.
See Element.firstElementChild for the first child element of specific elements within a document.
A Element object, or null.
document.firstElementChild; // returns the root <html> element, the only child of the document
| Specification |
|---|
| DOM> # ref-for-dom-parentnode-firstelementchild①> |
| Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chrome | Edge | Firefox | Opera | Safari | Chrome Android | Firefox for Android | Opera Android | Safari on IOS | Samsung Internet | WebView Android | WebView on iOS | |
firstElementChild |
29 | 17 | 25 | 16 | 9 | 29 | 25 | 16 | 9 | 2.0 | 4.4 | 9 |
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https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Document/firstElementChild