[whatwg] HTMLCollection and HTMLAllCollection suggestion

[Perry Smith]

On Apr 3, 2010, at 11:58 PM, David Flanagan wrote:

> Perry Smith wrote:
>> HTMLCollection has a namedItem method that returns either null or  
>> one object. [1]
>> HTMLAllCollection has a namedItem method that returns either null,  
>> one object, or a collection of objects. [2]
>> I'm a Rails freak and one of the things that they do which I love  
>> is foo returns an item and foos returns a list of items.  The  
>> unconscious benefit of this I believe is huge.
>> My suggestion is to have namedItem always return either null or 1  
>> object.
>> And have namedItem*s* always return a collection.  We can debate  
>> whether it is better to return null or an empty collection.  I  
>> prefer the latter myself.  Then I can always feed it to an iterator.
>> [1] http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/urls.html#htmlcollection-0
>> [2] http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/urls.html#htmlallcollection-0
>
> Perry,
>
> But no one actually invokes namedItem()--they just use a regular  
> property access expression on an HTMLAllCollection.  namedItem() is  
> left over from the strange days when the W3C was specifying Java  
> APIs for working with XML instead of JavaScript APIs for HTML!

Hmm.  I was wondering.  The pop up boxes on the side did not have any  
icons in them so I thought no one had implemented them.

Can you give me an example of "regular property access expression on  
an HTMLAllCollection" ?  I can't figure out what you are referring to.

Thanks,
Perry