154072 - Site uses proprietary IE-only DOM syntax

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 154071

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[Phil Schwartau]

Reported by [e-mail]

> In Mozilla 1.0 when I go to a page like 
> http://aspalliance.com/stevesmith/articles/ViewArticle.aspx?id=32 and try to
> use the links to change pages, nothing happens. The browser just sits there.



Reason: this site uses proprietary, IE-only syntax:

<form name="ViewArticle1:_ctl0"
        id="ViewArticle1__ctl0" >

<script>
function __doPostBack(eventTarget, eventArgument)
{
  var theform = document.ViewArticle1__ctl0; <<< MOZILLA ERRORS HERE

                etc.
}
</script>


For |document.ViewArticle1__ctl0| to resolve in a W3C-standard browser, the 
string "ViewArticle1__ctl0" should be the NAME of the <form> element, NOT its id 
as they have put it. (Note the name they do use for the <form> element has a 
colon inserted; it is a different string...)

Their code does work in IE. I do know that IE puts every HTML id into the global 
JavaScript namespace, which means that |window.ViewArticle1__ctl0| will resolve 
successfully. Yet apparently IE also resolves this as 
|document.ViewArticle1__ctl0|. Just load the given site in IE and try this 
JavaScript URL; it returns "true" !!!

  javascript: alert(window.ViewArticle1__ctl0 === document.ViewArticle1__ctl0);


However, this is not W3C-standard syntax. In Mozilla, each side of that equation 
is undefined. Just load the site and try:

  javascript: alert(window.ViewArticle1__ctl0);
  javascript: alert(document.ViewArticle1__ctl0);

Comment 1

[Arunan Balasubramaniam]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 154071 ***

Comment 2

[Phil Schwartau]

Verified Duplicate. (double-posting)