Appending an li to ul with vanilla JavaScript

Question

I'm having trouble with a really simple script, consisting of a text box, button, and list of items. Clicking the button adds the text box value to the list. For some reason, though, the text is getting appended as pure text, and not inside of an li element. JSFiddle

 <form>                      

     <input type="text" class="form-control" placeholder="Task" id="text_task">

   <button type="submit" id="btn_add_task" class="btn btn-primary">Add Task</button>

</form>           

<ul id = "list_tasks">

</ul>      

JS:

function $(element) {
    return document.getElementById(element);
}

var taskSubmit = $('btn_add_task');
var taskBox = $('text_task');
var taskList = $('list_tasks');

taskSubmit.addEventListener('click', function(e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    var task = taskBox.value.trim();

    var newLI = document.createElement('li');
    var element = newLI.appendChild(document.createTextNode(task));

    taskList.appendChild(element);

    taskBox.value = '';

}, false);

Answer 1

It's because you're returning the textNode to element when you should be appending newLI

var newLI = document.createElement('li');

newLI.appendChild(document.createTextNode(task));

taskList.appendChild(newLI);

FIDDLE