Better alternative to jQuery's innerHTML-like functions?

Better alternative to jQuery's innerHTML-like functions?

jQuery's after/before functions accept an HTML string as input. This seems akin to using innerHTML, which I thought was generally frowned upon. Is there a preferred way to add elements to the DOM using jQuery?

Also, I was wondering if someone could explain the difference between the filter, find and children functions? It looks like they do the exact same thing.

P.S. Nice to see someone setting up a proper forum for jQuery, I'm not a fan of Google Groups myself...