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Avoiding extra use of span

My question is that I have an html code <p> Hello World </p>
And want to change the css of every letter using JavaScript. Essentially, I will change the background color to make an animation. Is there a way to do this without making a span or some sort of tag around every letter and going through all that struggle?
I have my string array with colors and a method to call the correct color (data-index attribute).
Thanks!
EDIT: I have the entire word changing color and thought of an idea by making a function that iterates over the indexes of the innerHTML string and assigns a data-index to the letter's span by editing the function provided below by Cymen. Is this a good approach?

No, you will need to use a tag that supports background-color. You can easily wrap a string of characters in spans like so:
function wrapInSpans(string) {
return '<span>' + string.split('').join('</span><span>') + '</span>';
}

You would have to use a JavaScript function to wrap each character in a <span>.
window.onload = function() { // when everything loads, run the function
var elem = document.getElementById( "someId" );
var text = elem.innerHTML; // get the <p>'s text content
elem.innerHTML = ""; // then make the <p> empty
for( var i=0; i<text.length; i++ ) { // for each character in the text
elem.innerHTML += "<span>"+text[i]+"</span>";
}
};
Remember to change "someId" to the id of your <p> element.
You can access each individual character inside the for loop with text[i].

This would take quite a bit of code to spell out completely, but, if it's very important in your case to not actually add some type of wrapping element, then I believe this would be possible via a dynamically generated background image.
Roughly the steps would be:
Create a Range with a start and end around each character in the .textContents of the element you care about.
.getBoundingClientRect() on each range to get its rendered dimensions.
Draw rectangles of the desired color to a <canvas>.
Export the <canvas> as a data URI.
Use the data URI as a background-image.
Repeat for each block displayed element that you care about.
Be advised that there will, no doubt, be various edge cases in this approach and possible browser support limitations. Obviously just wrapping each character is a much simpler.

Switch HTML content of div with another piece of HTML without fading out to white first using jQuery

I'm looking for a way to fade from one piece of HTML in a div to another piece of HTML without fading out to white (to the background color of the div) first like i'm doing in this example:
The positionNumber variable is just an int with the number (e.g. 3).
function changeContent(positionNumber) {
$('.banner-content-wrapper').fadeOut('fast', function() {
var contentHtml = $('.slidercontent#' + positionNumber).html();
$('.banner-content-wrapper').hide().fadeIn(1000).html(contentHtml);
});
}
This example does the exact same by fading to white first but this is not what I'm lookig for:
Why doesn't jquery fadeIn() work with .html()?
I want to fade directly from one piece of HTML to another. I haven't been able to find any example on Stack Overflow that shows how to do exact that. I know this is not valid code but it's something like this I'm looking for:
$('.banner-content-wrapper').fadeToHtml(contentHtml);
How can I fade directly?

why use fadeOut/fadeIn - why not hide/show
function changeContent(positionNumber) {
$('.banner-content-wrapper').hide('fast', function() {
var contentHtml = $('.slidercontent#' + positionNumber).html();
$('.banner-content-wrapper').hide().html(contentHtml).show();
});
}
I have not tested this - just a suggestion based on the example you referenced

I don't think you should use fade. Try to use Replace.
http://api.jquery.com/replacewith/

How can I Strip all regular html tags except <a></a>, <img>(attributes inside) and <br> with javascript?

When a user create a message there is a multibox and this multibox is connected to a design panel which lets users change fonts, color, size etc.. When the message is submited the message will be displayed with html tags if the user have changed color, size etc on the font.
Note: I need the design panel, I know its possible to remove it but this is not the case :)
It's a Sharepoint standard, The only solution I have is to use javascript to strip these tags when it displayed. The user should only be able to insert links, images and add linebreaks.
Which means that all html tags should be stripped except <a></a>, <img> and <br> tags.
Its also important that the attributes inside the the <img> tag that wont be removed. It could be isplayed like this:
<img src="/image/Penguins.jpg" alt="Penguins.jpg" style="margin:5px;width:331px;">
How can I accomplish this with javascript?
I used to use this following codebehind C# code which worked perfectly but it would strip all html tags except <br> tag only.
public string Strip(string text)
{
return Regex.Replace(text, #"<(?!br[\x20/>])[^<>]+>", string.Empty);
}
Any kind of help is appreciated alot

Does this do what you want? http://jsfiddle.net/smerny/r7vhd/
$("body").find("*").not("a,img,br").each(function() {
$(this).replaceWith(this.innerHTML);
});
Basically select everything except a, img, br and replace them with their content.

Smerny's answer is working well except that the HTML structure is like:
var s = '<div><div>Link<span> Span</span><li></li></div></div>';
var $s = $(s);
$s.find("*").not("a,img,br").each(function() {
$(this).replaceWith(this.innerHTML);
});
console.log($s.html());
The live code is here: http://jsfiddle.net/btvuut55/1/
This happens when there are more than two wrapper outside (two divs in the example above).
Because jQuery reaches the most outside div first, and its innerHTML, which contains span has been retained.
This answer $('#container').find('*:not(br,a,img)').contents().unwrap() fails to deal with tags with empty content.
A working solution is simple: loop from the most inner element towards outside:
var $elements = $s.find("*").not("a,img,br");
for (var i = $elements.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
var e = $elements[i];
$(e).replaceWith(e.innerHTML);
}
The working copy is: http://jsfiddle.net/btvuut55/3/

with jQuery you can find all the elements you don't want - then use unwrap to strip the tags
$('#container').find('*:not(br,a,img)').contents().unwrap()
FIDDLE

I think it would be better to extract to good tags. It is easy to match a few tags than to remove the rest of the element and all html possibilities. Try something like this, I tested it and it works fine:
// the following regex matches the good tags with attrinutes an inner content
var ptt = new RegExp("<(?:img|a|br){1}.*/?>(?:(?:.|\n)*</(?:img|a|br){1}>)?", "g");
var input = "<this string would contain the html input to clean>";
var result = "";
var match = ptt.exec(input);
while (match) {
result += match;
match = ptt.exec(input);
}
// result will contain the clean HTML with only the good tags
console.log(result);

Formatting HTML with jQuery inside a javascript function

I'm trying to update numbers on a page based on button pushing by a user. I have it working, but when the number updates, the text is no longer formatted like it came in a <code></code> block. Here's the code I'm using minus any effort to control the format:
<script>
var countUp = function() {
$("#num").html(parseInt($("#num").html()) + 1);
$("#textWithNumInIt").html("The number is now"+$("#num").html() );
}
</script>
<p id="textWithNumInIt"><code>The number is 0</code></p>
I've tried putting <code></code> tags inside the jQuery, with and without escape characters. I've tried using .val() and .text() to set the text in an effort to leave the formatting alone. I've tried using a span around the number itself, but then the value doesn't even update.
This is the first time I have changed HTML using jQuery inside a javascript function, so the trouble might have something to do with that. Any help would be awesome, and if you have advice on a totally different way to do this, please share.

When you edit the contents of the textWithNumInIt paragraph, the <code> tags inside that paragraph are naturally replaced as well. This should work:
$("#textWithNumInIt").html("<code>The number is now "+$("#num").text()+"</code>" );

Maybe try this -
$('#textWithNumInIt code').html("The number is now "+$("#num").text() )

When you parseInt it, it gets converted into plain text and the <code> wrapper is gone. Use this and you will be on your path.
var countUp = function() {
var t = parseInt($("#num").text()) + 1);//using text() to avoid any unintentional html tag issues
$("#num").html(t);
$("#textWithNumInIt").html("<code>The number is now "+t+"</code>" );
}
or otherwise you can continue with your code by making a simple edit.
var countUp = function() {
$("#num").html(parseInt($("#num").html()) + 1);
$("#textWithNumInIt code").html("The number is now"+$("#num").html() );
}

How do I make this link work in javascript

Ok basically I have this javascript file http://assets.revback.com/scripts/share1.js that basically adds a bunch of share buttons via javascript.
What I want to do, is change the twitter image link to use an url shortener:
so instead of:
<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=Interesting Post:(UURRLL)\" title=\"Click to share this page on Twitter\"><img src=\"http:\/\/assets.revback.com\/scripts\/images\/twitter.png\" border=\"0\"\/><\/a>
I want to use
<a href="#" onClick="window.location='http://ko.ly?action=shorten&uri=' + window.location + '&dest=twitter.com/?status=Reading ';"><img src=http://assets.revback.com/scripts/images/twitter.png"><\/a>
but I need that bottom one, to be written with javascript friendly syntax. i.e. like in the top one, instead of http://, you have http://

Lose the onclick. There is no benefit to it whatsoever, since it just acts like a normal link (except much more broken). Now you don't have to worry about escaping JavaScript inside JavaScript and the consequent \\\\\\\\ madness.
var buttonhtml= (
'<a href="http://ko.ly?action=shorten&uri='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&dest=twitter.com/?status=Reading">'+
'<img src=http://assets.revback.com/scripts/images/twitter.png">'+
'</a>'
);
(Note that the encodeURIComponent, which is essential to correctly inserting your current URL into another URL without breaking, is also protecting you from HTML-injection, since < and & characters get %-encoded. Without that safeguard, any page that includes your script has cross-site-scripting vulnerabilities.)
Better still, lose the HTML string-slinging altogether and use DOM methods to create your content. Then you don't need to worry about & and other HTML escapes, and you don't have to hack your HTML together with crude, unreliable string replacing. You seem to be using jQuery, so:
var link= $('<a>', {href:'http://ko.ly?action=shorten&uri='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&dest=twitter.com/?status=Reading'});
link.append('<img>', {src: 'http://assets.revback.com/scripts/images/twitter.png'});
link.appendTo(mydiv);
ETA: I'd replace the whole markuppy mess with a loop and the data broken out into a lookup. ie. something like:
(function() {
var u= encodeURIComponent(location.href);
var t= encodeURIComponent(document.title);
var services= {
Facebook: 'http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u='+u,
Twitter: 'http://ko.ly?action=shorten&uri='+u+'&dest=twitter.com/?status=Reading',
StumbleUpon: 'http://www.stumbleupon.com\/submit?url='+u+'&title='+t,
// several more
};
var share= $('<div class="ea_share"><h4>Share this with others!</h4></div>');
for (var s in services) {
share.append($('<a>').attr('href', services[s]).attr('title', 'Click to share this on '+s).append(
$('<img>').attr('src', 'http://assets.styleguidence.com/scripts/images/'+s.toLowerCase()+'.png')
));
}
$('#question .vt').append(share);
})();

Try this
<a href="#" onClick="window.location='http://site.com?action=shorten&uri='+
window.location + '&dest=twitter.com/?status=Reading;'">tweet this</a>

<a href="#" onClick="window.location='http://site.com?action=shorten&uri=' + window.location.href + '&dest=twitter.com/?status=Reading ';return false;">tweet this

Change the href of the link in the onclick attribute:
tweet this
The default action (going to the page designated by the href attribute) will always still be executed unless the event handler onclick receives a return value of false. So, changing the href before it happens will cause it to go to the page you want it to as long as you don't return false.