199191 - merlindata.com - Uses insertAdjacentElement function (IE)

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[Adrian Croft]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; U; Warp 4; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030313
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; U; Warp 4; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030313

Information contained in a table is not being displayed in browser although it
exists in the source.  I'm looking at a webpage that apparently uses javascript
to sort the rows in a table.  When javascript is enabled for the page none of
the rows appear in the browser window.  However, if you disable javascript the
entire table is shown.  The JavaScript Console reports this error:
"Error: this.Table.rows[this.Table.rows.length - 1].insertAdjacentElement is not
a function
Source File: https://www.merlindata.com/include/SortableTable.CSJSI"

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
The site where I encountered this problem is a subscription site and therefore
could not be reproduced by you without a subscription but all you have to do is
load the page with javascript enabled.

Actual Results:  
Rows in a table were not displayed

Expected Results:  
Rows in a table should have been displayed.

Comment 1

[Adrian Croft]

Attachment: Here is the html source of the page that doesn't display correctly

Comment 2

[Adrian Croft]

Attachment: This is the javascript source that is required for the previous html file.

Comment 3

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

The page uses the insertAdjacentElement function, which appears to be
IE-specific. ->Tech Evang

Comment 4

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

tech evang june 2003 reorg

Comment 5

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Not Os/2 specific

Comment 6

[Tobias Buschor]

opera, safari, chrome and ie supports this function
and at the w3c its an working-draft:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/apis-in-html-documents.html#insertadjacenthtml

Comment 7

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> opera, safari, chrome and ie supports this function
> and at the w3c its an working-draft:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/apis-in-html-documents.html#insertadjacenthtml

We should morph this bug or else have a new one asking for us to implement insertAdjacentElement. Thomas Fuchs at JSConf notes it is useful on mobile and in IE and WebKit. He did not cite Opera but that pretty much means we should do it, in my view.

/be

Comment 8

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

We already have bug 613662 on implementing insertAdjecentHTML. I've never heard of insertAdjecent*Element* before, is that a misspelling of insertAdjecentHTML?

Comment 9

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

No.  insertAdjacentElement is not insertAdjacentHTML.  It's a way of inserting next to something as opposed to a child of something, and is IE-specific.  See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536451%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Comment 6 has nothing to do with this bug.

On the other hand, commen 7 may be relevant here.  I believe WebKit does implement insertAdjacentElement.  So it could be "useful" on mobile in the sense that webkit-only stuff might be using it.  Brendan, you're sure you got the right function name?

Comment 10

[Florian Bender]

I was using insertAdjacentElement in a Phonegap app and was surprised this is not included in Firefox. It's easily polyfill-able but AFAIK it's implemented in every other (major) engine (so developers will forget to add it). I find this method quite handy especially if you are used to writing insertAdjacentHTML/Text (and it reduces code resp. looks cleaner). However, I cannot find any W3 or WHATWG stadards definition (but take a look at the MSDN link). It should work analogous to insertAdjacentHTML. 

Should I add a new bug for implementing this or should this bug be changed? If this lands within a short time, should this be uplifted to make it into B2G (Gecko 17/18)?

Comment 11

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

ms2ger: Is this something that should be added to DOM Core spec? It seems like if all other browser vendors are implementing it, and that it's genuinely useful (although will a somewhat verbose name) that it should simply be added.

Comment 12

[Florian Bender]

Jonas, ms2ger: see also Bug 811259.

Comment 13

[:Ms2ger (he/him; ⌚ UTC+1/+2)]

I don't see a particular reason to implement this, given that we've had only one suggestion to add it since 2003. I would suggest implementing the new mutation methods [1] instead (after we move Element to WebIDL, I guess).

[1] http://dom.spec.whatwg.org/#mutation-methods

Comment 14

[Florian Bender]

Hmm. I still think it's a good idea to implement this due to consistency (parity-webkit|parity-ie|parity-presto [1]). Maybe the codebase can be shared with the mutation methods?

[1] http://help.dottoro.com/ljbreokf.php

Comment 15

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

I agree there doesn't seem to be a huge clamoring for this. Searching google for insertAdjecentElement does indicate that there are many more people that has been missing this function in Firefox though. The top quicksearch suggestion for 'insertAdjecentElement' is 'insertAdjecentElement firefox'.

Comment 16

[Adam Stevenson [:adamopenweb]]

I believe the site has been updated. Not able to log into the site to know for sure. Closing but please reopen if the bug still exists.