398777 - Clearly document the differences and respective use cases for offsetWidth, clientWidth, and scrollWidth

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Developer Documentation Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Jeff Walden [:Waldo]]

There are three different properties for getting the "width" of a node in a document.  The differences between the three are not clearly described anywhere that I can tell, and if I were trying to decide which to use in a particular situation (bug 199692 comment 53), I really wouldn't know which to use.

I think it would be awesome if we clarified the exact behaviors of each of the three and how their values are affected by different combinations of CSS properties and ancestor element styles within each property's article.  I also think it would be awesome if we had an article specifically devoted to getting the width of a node which described when you'd want to use each of the different properties and why you wouldn't want to use the others.

Comment 1

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

How's this?

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Determining_the_dimensions_of_elements

Comment 2

[Jeff Walden [:Waldo]]

Whee!

Add some links to this on the pages documenting the various properties being discussed, and perhaps mention it more prominently in the DOM section of MDC, and I think you're golden.

Comment 3

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

Done.  Should have already done that but I just plain forgot; thanks for the reminder.