Internet Explorer problem?

zoliky · #1 (**permalink**) 05-12-08, 05:28 AM

I use the following code to show all elements in alert box after page is loaded:

javascript Code:

var items = document.getElementsByTagName("*");
        
for (var i=0; i < items.length; i++)
{
    alert(items[i].nodeName);
}

My code work in Firefox 2.x, Opera and Safari but internet explorer not show the alert box. I use IE 7.
I read somewhere, I need to use "document.all" instead of "document.getElementsByTagName("*")" for explorer but I have the same problem.

Any idea? thanks!

Vicious · #2 (**permalink**) 05-12-08, 08:01 AM

I don't think that * is a valid tag. Strange that it works in FF and such.
Your code looks ok to me, the only thing that can cause the problem is your document.getElementsByTagName("*") call.

Since you seem to be in a learning mood, I can tell you that your loop is quite "slow". The items.length call is expensive timewise. And you make that call in every loop iteration. The fastest way would be:

javascript Code:

for (var i=0,l=items.length;i < l; i++){
alert(items[i].nodeName);
}

Before alerting the nodeName, you should check the nodeType. Because IE will return a line break in your code as a text-node. This can cause you errors.

zoliky · #3 (**permalink**) 05-12-08, 04:13 PM

I don't know if asterisk (*) is valid but my Javascript book teach this way.

First of all, we’ll need to get all the elements in the document. We do this using getElementsByTagName, but we’re not going to look for a particular tag; instead, we’re going to pass this method the special value "*", which tells it to return all elements.

Anyway I have another question related to getElementsByTagName.

For example this HTML CODE:

Code:

<html>
<head>
  <title>My title</title>
</head>
<body>
   <ul class="my class">
     <li>one</li>
     <li>two</li>
   </ul>
</body>
</html>

and this javascript code:

javascript Code:

var mynode = document.getElementsByTagName("ul");

The question:
The Javascript code get only the element name, for example : UL or get the element name and the class name ?

UnrealEd · #4 (**permalink**) 05-13-08, 03:33 AM

to access the attributes (such as "class", "style", "id", ....) of a node, you have to use the attributes property of the node:

JavaScript Code:

var mynode = document.getElementsByTagName ("*");
for (var i in mynode.attributes)
  alert (i + "=" + mynode.attributes[i]);