getElementById in global scope gives just null

[Börni]

Hi,
I'm just wondering why one cant do something like this outside of an
function:
alert(document.getElementById("edit"));

this just gives null, but inside a function it works.

[Michael Winter]

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 16:52:14 +0000, Börni <b.******@onlinehome.de> wrote:

I'm just wondering why one cant do something like this outside of an
function:
alert(document.getElementById("edit"));

You can. More than likely the element, edit, hasn't been parsed by the
browser when the getElementById call is made. This will happen if, for
example, the relevant SCRIPT element is in the document head.

Create a SCRIPT element after the closing tag of 'edit' and include your
code.

[snip]

Mike

--
Michael Winter
Replace ".invalid" with ".uk" to reply by e-mail.

[Martin Honnen]

Börni wrote:

I'm just wondering why one cant do something like this outside of an
function:
alert(document.getElementById("edit"));

this just gives null, but inside a function it works.

Well if it gives null it does work too, it just means no element with
that id can be found, presumably as the script is called somewhere
before the element is parsed e.g.
<script type="text/javascript">
alert(document.getElementById("edit"));
</script>
<div id="edit">...</div>

--

Martin Honnen
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/