74201 - Internet Explorer (document.all) Compatibility

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Core :: DOM: Core & HTML, enhancement)

Description

[Bryant Howell]

If we wanted to beat Microsoft at their own game, why not slip in compatibility
with some of their features, like document.all. Would it be possible that when
document.all is located and no branches for Mozilla are available in the
Javascript, that document.all function as document.getElementById(). This would
solve compatibility with the old Internet Explorer versions. Maybe this goes
against the spirit of the browser but I think it would be great after 1.0 to
support all the old stuff to say not only are we the most compatible with the
W3C , but we also match the competition.

Comment 1

[lchiang]

*** Bug 74202 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[lchiang]

confirming enhancement request

Comment 3

[Blake Ross]

Assuming the "game" in question is a complete disregard for standards, then 
this would seem to defeat the purpose of all the standards compliance work 
we've done, no?  I don't think very many people would see it as beating them at 
their own game, either, so much as supporting the same propietary extensions 
they do.

Comment 4

[Johnny Stenback (:jst)]

If it would've been decided in the early days of mozilla that document.all
should be supported then I wouldn've have much problem with doing so, but
deciding now to start supporting document.all is IMO a very bad idea, there are
pages our there already that use code like:

  if (document.all) {
    // Do IE specific stuff
  } else if (document.getElementById) {
    // Do mozilla specific stuff
  } ...

and if we'd now all of a sudden started supporting document.all we'd break
things like this.

Even worse, the closer to IE mozilla gets (in terms of DOM functionality) the
more bugs we'll get about mozilla not working exactly as IE does, and I'm not up
for revers-engineering everything in IE at this point, that would be extremely
complicated and time consuming. We're already seeing similar problems with
mozilla's support for IE's element.offsetXXX properties, they behave more or
less the same way, but not exactly what IE does, and finding out exactly how IE
works is non-trivial (for all the hundreds of proprietary methods/properties in
IE), to say the least.

I'm all for implementing functionality in mozilla that exists in IE and is very
useful, cleanly defined and has a nice clean API, however, document.all is not
one of those things, I it's not a clean API (it's a list and a hash and callable
function, and what exactly does it contain? Who knows?), there are other nice
clean standards compliant API's that give you everything that document.all gives
you, I say that's enough.

Marking WONTFIX.

Comment 5

[Blake Ross]

Everything Johnny said.

Comment 6

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

*** Bug 154589 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

*** Bug 212784 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[arnonm]

Well, there goes any chance of Mozilla taking over the world.
Standards are for people who live in a utopic world.
There is one standard for browsers, no matter what any comittee says, and that 
is the buggy behavior of IE. 
If thousands of websites use Microsoft products to design their sites, and 
those products implant Microsoft scripts in the web pages, then no arguing or 
whining or justifying standards is going to help Mozilla proliferate.
If I can't use Mozilla to access my favorite web sites (and as of now I can't), 
then I will still need Internet Explorer for most of my browsing.

Comment 9

[Gilles Durys]

*** Bug 226984 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[David Jameson]

I agree that we need to add IE compatibility in order to make Mozilla more
useful. There are a large number of sites out there that use IE specific
javascript code that breaks on Mozilla. I have no choice - I have to use
many of these sites, and to do so I have to load up IE.

Why not make IE compatibility an option that can be switched on?

Comment 11

[Anne (:annevk)]

*** Bug 229877 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[Anne (:annevk)]

*** Bug 230212 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[Prognathous]

*** Bug 230927 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Jesse Ruderman]

Continued in bug 154589 (marked as a dup of this one), bug 229877.

Comment 15

[Bill Mason]

*** Bug 240982 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

[Bozhan Boiadzhiev]

I think taht standart compilance is good..:>
Ok let's lash all of the bad guys which doesn't want to follow standarts,
instaed of do nothing show FIVE BIG WARNINGS on page right where they want to
use  document.all or whatever mozilla can't show,
that developer is stupid and he is doing wrong thing.
This is a joke!!!!!!!
but is even better of do nothing and wait microsoft to force developers to use
getElementById... 

Comment 17

[Bozhan Boiadzhiev]

this is my last comment... sorry..
first variant rise and alert on every document.all... :>
second variant write in html coments about where developer have to read about
document.all and documen.getelementbyid... :>
third variant mimicry documnet.all to document.getelementbyid for most used
situation like changing styles ..
document.all.item().style.backgroundColor or
document.all.item().src

Comment 18

[Bozhan Boiadzhiev]

(In reply to comment #4)
> If it would've been decided in the early days of mozilla that document.all
> should be supported then I wouldn've have much problem with doing so, but
> deciding now to start supporting document.all is IMO a very bad idea, there are
> pages our there already that use code like:
> 
>   if (document.all) {
>     // Do IE specific stuff
>   } else if (document.getElementById) {
>     // Do mozilla specific stuff
>   } ...
> 

This is the main problem. Braking this will force deveolopers to stop using it.
And they will make their code standart.

WONTFIX is a cowardly solution.



> and if we'd now all of a sudden started supporting document.all we'd break
> things like this.
> 
> Even worse, the closer to IE mozilla gets (in terms of DOM functionality) the
> more bugs we'll get about mozilla not working exactly as IE does, and I'm not up
> for revers-engineering everything in IE at this point, that would be extremely
> complicated and time consuming. 

No body wants mozilla to work exactly as IE does, it's not about mozilla and IE
it's about webdevelopers, once they learn that ease solution like above JS is
bad they'll find elegant way using getelementbyid.

>We're already seeing similar problems with
> mozilla's support for IE's element.offsetXXX properties, they behave more or
> less the same way, but not exactly what IE does, and finding out exactly how IE
> works is non-trivial (for all the hundreds of proprietary methods/properties in
> IE), to say the least.
> 
> I'm all for implementing functionality in mozilla that exists in IE and is very
> useful, cleanly defined and has a nice clean API, however, document.all is not
> one of those things, I it's not a clean API (it's a list and a hash and callable
> function, and what exactly does it contain? Who knows?), there are other nice
> clean standards compliant API's that give you everything that document.all gives
> you, I say that's enough.
>
Forget about API and properties and methods, when developer find that he can't
swich which metods to use with JS as above he will use getelementbyid.
 
> Marking WONTFIX.

Comment 19

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

> This is the main problem. Braking this will force deveolopers to stop using 
> it. And they will make their code standart.

No they really won't. Just look at the number of sites that use document.all 
right now and _do_ break.

Comment 20

[Johnny Stenback (:jst)]

For those who care, bug 248549 adds support for document.all in a way that
doesn't break existing standards compliant code.

Comment 21

[Jonathan Ernst]

Please keep this bug WONTFIX for ever. IE is loosing 0.2% market share every
single month we certainly don't need to bloat mozilla browsers with non standard
****.

- As a webdeveloper I'm always trying to follow web standards in a hope that
it'll render the same for everyone.
- As a user if a site doesn't work in my browser because of bad code the site is
not worth visiting and the only thing I would do is write to it's webmaster to
ask hime to make his homework.