"Lasse Reichstein Nielsen" <lr*@hotpop.com > wrote in message
news:vf******** **@hotpop.com.. .
<snip>
Most browsers accept some shorthands for both the forms and
elements collections:
document.formNa me.elemName
or (notably IE)
formName.elemNa me
(i.e., window.formName .elemName)
None of these shorthands are part of the W3C DOM
specificatio n, so it is safer to write write it all out.
<snip>
While non of these shorthand versions are specified, the HTML DOM level
2 specification does appear to allow a short hand of referring to the
element as a named property of the form object:-
FormObject['elemName']
- or -
FormObject.elem Name
- as the spec describes the form element as <quote> The FORM element
encompasses behavior similar to a collection and an element. It provides
direct access to the contained form controls as well as the attributes
of the form element.</quote>.
I, like you, prefer to use the longer form and access via the elements
collection using:-
document.forms['formName'].elements['elName']
- for exactly the same reasons of code clarity (and universal browser
support), and if it will be a problem that that form resolves slightly
slower than a shortcut form then that can usually be overcome by caching
a reference to the elements collection and subsequently referring to
named elements relative to that.
var els = document.forms['formName'].elements;
for(var c = 0;c < 10000;c++){
els['elName'+c].value = ''; //clear 10000 consecutively named
//elements without resolving the
//form object or its elements
//collection for each.
}
Richard.
