Unfortunately I need to iterate over all the DOM elements of a page and I'm wondering what the most efficient technique is. I could probably benchmark these myself and might if I have the time but I'm hoping someone has already experienced this or has some options I hadn't considered.

Currently I'm using jQuery and doing this:

$('body *').each(function(){                                                                                                                            

    var $this = $(this);                                                                                                                                

    // do stuff                                                                                                                                         

});

While it works, It seems to cause some lag on the client. It could also be tweaked with a more specific jQuery context like $('body', '*'). It occurred to me that native Javascript is usually faster than jQuery and I found this:

var items = document.getElementsByTagName("*");

for (var i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {

    // do stuff

}

I'm assuming the native option is faster. Wondering if there are other options I hadn't considered. Maybe a recursive option that iterates over child nodes in parallel.