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absolutely stupid question about form

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Mar 30.2005

isn’t it an INPUT type=’image’ a form’s element? Why so?:

[code=php]
 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd”>
<html>
<head>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Style-Type” content=”text/css”>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Script-Type” content=”text/javascript”>
<script language=”JavaScript” type=”text/JavaScript”>
onload=function(){
alert(document.forms[0].elements.length);//why 0 ?
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<form>
<input name=”foo” type=”image” src=”00.jpg”>
</form>
</body>
</html>
[/code]

to post a comment
JavaScript

12 Comments(s) ↴

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@FangMar 30.2005 — Only text inputs are defined as form controls. http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/interact/forms.html#form-controls
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@KorauthorMar 30.2005 — well, hm... I was not talking about controls (anyway, after all an input typed image can submit it's image coordinates, so that, somehow, it acts as a control, after all)... I was just trying to reference that element as a form's element. I am able to do that using DOM methods, but it looks weird to me that such an input element is not considered as a form's element....
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@Orc_ScorcherMar 30.2005 — Backwards compatibility. Navigator 2 didn't add type="image" elements to the collection and to be compatible with old scripts Nav3 didn't change that behaviour. Since then, every new browser has avoided to break this sacred tradition.
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@KorauthorMar 30.2005 — ? Well... hm... passing through browsers variants, almost all the time the new ones [b]added[/b] the new behaviours to the old ones... Shall I understand that the "wise guys" forgot to add the typed image to the form's elements as well... ? That is a memorable lack of memory ? ?
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@FangMar 30.2005 — Only form controls are included in the [I]elements[/I] collection. So if it is not listed as a control ...
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@Orc_ScorcherMar 30.2005 — Adding new features is fine as long as it doesn't break (too many) existing pages. Since many form validation used hardcoded values such a change would (it still would, I bet) have caused mayor damage. People would have whined and buggered Netscape all day long if what was elements[2] before became elements[3] suddenly. I'm pretty certain this wasn't an oversight but a conscious design decision.
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@KorauthorMar 30.2005 — as long as it is an INPUT and, furthermore, as long as it can submit, it [b]should[/b] be a control. It [b]acts[/b] as a control... It can submit values to the server, so that [b]it interacts[/b] with the other form's elements. If so, how is that it is not a form's element?
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@Orc_ScorcherMar 30.2005 — <input type="image"> is a form control. See HTML 4.01 17.4.1 if you need proof.
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@FangMar 30.2005 — The W3C is a little ambiguous as in '17.2.1 Control types' only text inputs are included.

That is the html side but the [I]elements[/I] array is JavaScript. The older browsers (NN4) did not have support for events in inputs of type image. As [B]Kor[/B] wrote a possible oversight not to add it to the elements array in a later version of JavaScript.

The [I]form[/I] is full of bugs and exceptions; look at the differences in CSS or DOM implementation between the browsers!
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@KorauthorMar 31.2005 — Of course, there are DOM solutions to reach the image file element (for those who may encounter the same problem for the future):

[i]root[/i].getElementsByName('inputname')[0]

or

[i]root[/i].getElementsByTagName('input')[index];

or circle through contioned by type

Still, it is strange that javascript 1 has not included the image file into the form's elements' collection
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@Orc_ScorcherMar 31.2005 — In case you are interested in browser development history, [url=https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61413#c4]here[/url] is the story behind it, direct from JavaScript's creator.
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@KorauthorMar 31.2005 — yeap, thanks, now I see that there is a bug, after all, but the resons for ommiting the image inputs from form's collections are quite resonable... At least they [i]were[/i] resonable enough at the time.... ?
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