[thelist] Why is NS6 DHTML so SLOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW?!

[James Aylard]

> Sounds typically Microsoft, so I believe you. I installed IE5 on the same
> computer, so maybe the script engine has been updated automatically.

    Yep. That'll do it. Actually, I think it's a great idea in theory --
being able to update the scripting capability of a browser without updating
the browser itself. But then, who's going to do that? It's more of a
componentization thing, I guess.

> Maybe not, but I never quite thought of it this way. Of course write() is
a
> method of document, but I've always seen the DOM as a way to access
specific
> HTML elements and do something with them, so in that definition
> document.write() would not be part of the DOM.

    But it is part of the W3C DOM (Level 1) [1]. If you think about the term
"document object model" literally, it makes perfect sense IMHO. A document
is made up of a series of objects, and is itself an object. Most of these
objects have properties and methods, and one of the methods of the document
object is the write() method.
    In fact, Microsoft was absolutely correct to segregate its proprietary
DOM (which it now refers to as its "DHTML Object Model") from its scripting
language -- as it had to in order to accommodate VBScript interaction with
the browser. It results in a far more logical construction, IMO, than what
Netscape came up with. And it is a segregated model employed by the W3C and
ECMA (and now, by extension, Netscape 6).

James Aylard

1. http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1/level-one-html.html#ID-75233634