[whatwg] HTMLCollection and HTMLAllCollection suggestion

[Perry Smith]

On Apr 5, 2010, at 1:04 PM, David Flanagan wrote:

> Perry Smith wrote:
>> 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
>
> Perry,
>
> I think the only HTMLAllCollection is the deprecated document.all.
> By regular property access expression, I mean something like:
>
>    document.all.foo
>
> or
>
>    document.all["foo"]
>
> instead of:
>
>    document.all.namedItem("foo")

I'm confused by the spec at this point.  The title for section 13 is  
"obsolete features" but then 13.3 is "Requirements" and indeed 13.3.4  
has features not yet implemented but considered deprecated by David  
(who I assume knows what he is talking about).  I test a little bit in  
firefox and document.all doesn't work.  So I look and see that Firefox  
is developing it.

Is the HTMLAllCollection coming or going?

Sorry for the confusion.

Perry