reliable html to string via Javascript

[sosuke]

I have tried to search for a solution to this problem before posting here but anything related to strings kicks back a million reference pages and when I start trying to get any more specific everything I find is about writing to the DOM when I need to just read it out!

I was using innerHTML and passing it through as well formatted XML to Flash for parsing. This was working great in Firefox and I thought I was nearly finished when I had the bright idea of testing in IE7. FAIL! Malformed XML could not be parsed.
IE7:

<DIV id=projects>

FF:

<div id="projects">

How can I get the equivalent string return for my HTML structure in IE7? innerHTML is not going to work as IE7 is stripping information and reformatting my text.

This is a sample of what I am using now:

document.getElementById("pageContainer").innerHTML