533056 - Elements inside <noscript> block aren't added to DOM tree

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

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

Description

[Brandon Sterne (:bsterne)]

Given the following:

<div id="d">hello <b>world</b>!</div>
<noscript id="n">hello <b>world</b>!</noscript>

consider the following DOM calls:

document.getElementById("d").childNodes.length
3

document.getElementById("d").firstChild.nodeValue
hello

document.getElementById("n").childNodes.length
1

document.getElementById("n").firstChild.nodeValue
hello <b>world</b>!

In short, the contents of the <noscript> element are added to the DOM as a single text node which can lead to confusing behavior for certain JS libraries making DOM calls.

For example, if jQuery is added to the page above, then we get the following:

$("#d").text()
hello world!

$("#n").text()
hello <b>world</b>!

Comment 1

[Peter Van der Beken [:peterv]]

This is specified by the HTML5 spec and I think we'd want to keep it that way, see http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/?slow-browser#the-noscript-element ("Outside of head elements, if scripting is enabled for the noscript element - The noscript element must contain only text").

INVALID?

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Yes.  For one thing, if we didn't do this, then content inside <noscript> would load resources, etc.  Definitely not desirable.

Comment 3

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

Indeed. We are simply following the HTML 5 spec here. If you disagree with what the spec says I'd recommend that you raise that with whatwg or the HTML wg.