304713 - Changes made by setAttributeNS and setAttributeNodeNS do not have an effect on dynamic object tags in XHTML served as application/xhtml+xml

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Michael A. Puls II]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6

This at least happens on an xhtml page served as application/xhtml+xml using the
default xhtml namespace when you create an object tag with DOM methods to load a
web page.

If you use document.createElementNS("http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml","object") to
explicitly create an object element under the default namespace and use
setAttributeNS("http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml", "attribute", "value") to
explicitly set its attributes under the default namespace, when you append the
object to the document, the element gets appended and the attributes are set for
the element, but the attributes have no effect and it appears that the
attributes are set under a different namespace than the one specified.

Same problem happens if you use createAttributeNodeNS and setAttributeNodeNS.

This is not a problem in Opera.

The problem does not happen if you use setAttribute and setAttributeNode.

Specified URL contains test cases and discussion.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Try the test cases posted at http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=304822
Actual Results:  
object tag is appended to the document, but the web page in it doesn't load.

Expected Results:  
http://www.google.com/ should load in the object tag window.

The easy workaround is to not use NS functions if you are just working with the
default namespace.  However, because there may be problems with setAttributeNS
and setAttributeNodeNS when dealing with other namespaces, this should be rated
as a normal bug that should be fixed.

No problems with Opera.

Comment 1

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Attachment: testcase1

Testcase1 from reporter

Comment 2

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Attachment: testcase2

Testcase2 from reporter

Comment 3

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Duplicate of bug 192891? See also what bug 212700, comment 2 has to say.

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> setAttributeNS("http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml", "attribute", "value") to
> explicitly set its attributes under the default namespace

The default namespace for attributes is the null namespace.  In XHTML, there are no attributes in the XHTML namespace -- attributes in the null namespace on particular nodes have particular meanings.

This bug is invalid.  Please file a bug on Opera's namespaces in XML implementation if this works in Opera.

Comment 5

[Jon Barnett]

http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-names11/#defaulting
Quote:
the interpretation of unprefixed attributes is determined by the element on which they appear.

<foo xmlns="bar" x="value">

The element "foo" is in the "bar" namespace. "x" is an unprefixed attribute. "x" appears on element "foo". "x" is in the "bar" namespace.
Code:
<foo xmlns="bar"><baz x="value" /></foo>

The element "bar" is in the "bar" namespace because the "bar" namespace was defined on the element "foo" as a default namespace". "x" is an unprefixed attribute. "x" appears on element "baz". "x" is in the "bar" namespace. 

This bug is valid.

Comment 6

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

No, in neither of those examples is "x" in the "bar" namespace; in both cases it is in the per-element-type partition (sometimes called the null namespace).

Default namespace declarations do not apply to attributes.

For more details see:
   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/

In particular, see the last sentence of the first paragraph of section 5.2. Appendix A.2 goes into more detail about this but may be more confusing than helpful if you are not familiar with XML terminology (e.g. "element type" is
the formal term for "tag name").

Comment 7

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Jon, see my response in the Mozillazine thread.  In brief, your claims contradict sections 5.2, 5.3, and A.2 of Namespaces in XML.