JavaScript 2.0-The Complete Reference, Second ... - freecodingtutorial

Table 13-2: Traditional Document Collections
Collection
Name
Description Browser
Compatibility
applets[] All the Java applets in a page
as defined by the tag.
embeds[] All the tags in a
page.
forms[] All forms in a page as set by
the tag.
images[] A collection of all images in the
page indicated by the HTML
tag.
links[] The links in the page defined
by tags of the form ….
plugins[] All the tags in a
page. This collection is
synonymous with embeds[],
the preferred collection.
Netscape 3+
and Internet
Explorer 4+
Netscape 3+
and Internet
Explorer 4+
Netscape 2+
and Internet
Explorer 3+
Netscape 3+
and Internet
Explorer 4+
Netscape 2+
and Internet
Explorer 3+
Netscape 3+
and Internet
Explorer 4+
DOM
Support
DOM Level 1
No DOM
Support
DOM Level 1
DOM Level 1
DOM Level 1
No DOM
support
Besides the common collections presented in Table 13-2, traditionally the Document object
also has supported the title property, which holds the title of the document as specified by the
tag within the head element of an (X)HTML document. Under traditional JavaScript,
this property is a read-only string. However, under modern browsers you can set its value as
well.
document.anchors[] and document.links[]
The first (X)HTML tag-related objects we examine in detail are links and anchors that have
been accessible since the first versions of JavaScript. In (X)HTML, an anchor is a link that is
named—in other words, it serves as a destination for other links. Anchors are defined with …. A link is also defined with the tag but contains an
href attribute setting a link destination, like so: click
me!. Of course, it should be evident that a link can be an anchor as well, since is perfectly valid.
The anchors[] collection doesn‘t seem too useful in JavaScript because traditionally you could
only access its length property using document.anchors.length. Other than that you really
can‘t appear to modify anything. Since under the DOM an tag is referenced by an
HTMLAnchorElement, you are certainly free to change an arbitary attribute of the tag.
The links[] collection contains all the objects corresponding to each found in the
document. As it is an array we can, of course, access its length with document.links.length.
However, we can manipulate the URLs within the href attributes of each link. Link objects
under most browsers will have the same properties as the Location object, including hash,
host, hostname, href, pathname, port, protocol, and search. These properties correspond
to the individual portions of a URL except href, which contains the whole URL.