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Re: DOM support in IE vs. NS

• To: Joshua Allen <joshuaa@m...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: DOM support in IE vs. NS
• From: Ken Sall <kensall@c...>
• Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 17:25:53 -0500
• Cc: plh@w...
• Organization: Ken Sall Consulting
• References: <4F4182C71C1FDD4BA0937A7EB7B8B4C107FD66E7@r...>

<Joshua>
The best way to find out what scriptable functions are available in a
particular vendor's browser is to look at the browser's documentation.
If the function is documented in MSDN as being supported by IE, then it
should work on IE.

If you want to find out what scriptable functions work across all
browser versions (not many), or across particular browser
versions/vendors, your best bet is to go to one of the web sites that
collects such information for webmasters.  Better yet, get one of the
browser-neutral code libraries (there are some really good ones) that
abstract away all browser differences for a particular range of browsers
and let you write code that will be guaranteed to work on any of the
supported browsers.  This is much less frustrating than trying to figure
by trial-and-error which pieces of the W3C specs are implemented from
version to version of Netscape and IE.
</Joshua>

Joshua,

Since Microsoft is no longer a member of the DOM Working Group, does your
answer imply that Microsoft has no intention of supporting the DOM Level 2
API that has been a W3C Recommendation since Nov. 2000?

One of the motivations for the DOM was to reduce the need for much of the
cross-browser incompatibility nonsense that resulted from Netscape and
Microsoft coming up with different DHTML (remember that term?) elements and
attributes. I don't see why Microsoft cannot write an API that adheres
exactly to DOM2 so that, for example,(W3C DOM Activity Lead) Philippe Le
Hégaret's code would work right out of the box. [1]

[1] http://www.w3.org/2003/02/06-dom-support.html
     [What does your user agent claim to support?]

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  • RE: DOM support in IE vs. NS
    • From: "Joshua Allen" <joshuaa@m...>

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