[whatwg] HTMLCollection and HTMLAllCollection suggestion

Tue Jul 27 16:42:27 PDT 2010

On Sat, 3 Apr 2010, Perry Smith wrote:
>
> HTMLCollection has a namedItem method that returns either null or one 
> object.
> 
> HTMLAllCollection has a namedItem method that returns either null, one 
> object, or a collection of objects.
> 
> 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 namedItems 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.

Unfortunately this is all stuff that was decided over a decade ago, we 
can't really change it at this point.

On Sat, 3 Apr 2010, David Flanagan wrote:
> 
> 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!

Indeed.

On Sun, 4 Apr 2010, Perry Smith wrote:
> 
> 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.

They aren't always entirely up to date. If anyone wants to help maintain 
them please feel free to do so!

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

On Mon, 5 Apr 2010, David Flanagan wrote:
> 
> 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")

Indeed.

On Tue, 6 Apr 2010, Perry Smith wrote:
> 
> 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).

Obsolete features still have to be implemented by browsers so that they 
can render yesterday's Web pages.

> I test a little bit in firefox and document.all doesn't work.  So I look 
> and see that Firefox is developing it.

On Tue, 6 Apr 2010, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
> 
> Sure it does:
> 
>   data:text/html,<body><script>alert(document.all.length);</script>
> 
> > Is the HTMLAllCollection coming or going?
> 
> Neither.  It's here; no one is planning to add new features to it, web 
> pages are discouraged from using it.

Indeed.

On Tue, 6 Apr 2010, Perry Smith wrote:
> 
> Ok... sorry if I've wasted peoples time.

No worries!

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