113197 - document.forms[0].length isn't counting inputs of type image

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

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

Description

[Doug Alcorn]

I've created a very small page that has two form elements on it.  One is of type
image and the other is of type button.  The button has an onclick event to run
javascript alert(document.forms[0].length).  I would expect to get the number 2
out.  Instead I get only 1.  It doesn't matter how many inputs I put of type
image.  They all get ignored/not counted.

I've also tested this on Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US;
rv:0.9.6) Gecko/20011120.

Comment 1

[Phil Schwartau]

Confirming with Mozilla trunk binary 20011126xx WinNT.
Browser, not engine. Reassigning to DOM Level 0 - 

Comment 2

[Johnny Stenback (:jst)]

<input type="image"> elements are not included in form.elements in any versions
of IE, nor in any versions of Netscape, therefore they are not included in
form.elements in mozilla either for compatibility reasons.

INVALID.

Comment 3

[Doug Alcorn]

IE 5.0 on Mac OS8.6, IE 5.5 Mac OS X 10.1.1, and IE 5.5 on Mac OS 9.2 (in
classic env.) counts <input type="image"> elements.  This is one of those times
when I think the rest of the hurd is crazy.  Does the html standard say that
<input type="image"> is not legal form element?  Is there any good reason (other
than compatibility with possibly broken browsers) not to count these elements? 
Taking a look at 

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#h-17.4
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#input-control-types
I don't see anything about <input type="image"> as being second-class elements.

Comment 4

[Johnny Stenback (:jst)]

Mac IE is non-compliant with the defacto standard DOM0, IE x.x on windows, and
all versions of Netscape that supports <input type="image"> do *not* include
them in form.elements.

We will not fix this, fixing this would cause a significant number of sites to
break, IE on the mac will not work on those pages either, and I wouldn't expect
the sites to "fix" their pages just because Mac IE is broken.

WONTFIX.

Comment 5

[Alex Weyers]

I wish someone would explain to me why this has become accepted when it does 
not conform to any actual DOM specs.

Comment 6

[Johnny Stenback (:jst)]

It's accepted because it conforms to the defacto DOM0 (i.e. current behavior of
IE 3+ and NS3+), it's all about compatibility with the majority of the browsers
used out there. DOM0 might not be written down anywhere, but it's nevertheless a
*very* important *standard*, ever wonderd where the definition of the |window|
object in mozilla comes from?

Comment 7

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

It's not undocumented:
   http://whatwg.org/specs/web-forms/current-work/#additions