Avoiding Problems With JavaScript’s getElementById Method in Internet Explorer 7
Every week this website gets about 700 unique visits from Google searches, mostly from people searching for solutions to problems with JavaScript and CSS. I’m flattered, and I hope I can continue to publish useful articles that will assist people and help with the exchange of ideas and techniques. One search phrase that leads surfers to my site pretty much every day is something along the lines of “getElementById explorer 7”.
If you type this phrase into Google, Impressive Webs currently comes in at around result 115. Not to mention the fact that the article that comes up doesn’t really address this issue directly. That’s not a very good ranking for that search phrase — yet somehow people are still finding one of my pages through that search.
It is obvious that developers — likely beginners — are having issues getting the proper results when utilizing the getElementById method available in JavaScript, particularly in Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7. And since the users seem to be searching through dozens of web pages looking for a solution to their particular problem, then obviously the pages discussing this JavaScript method are either too confusing or don’t specifically provide a practical solution.
This is a quick tip to demonstrate a way to work around the problem of child elements in your HTML inheriting the “alpha” settings of their parent. This tip is not necessarily recommended, because it creates extra markup and is a little bit messy. But I’m sure it could come in handy in a rare case, depending on the layout of the elements involved, the content, the type of site, etc.
One particular design trend that has caught my attention of late on web development and graphic design blogs is the fancy gray border that surrounds images in blog posts. There are subtle variations of it around the web, which you can see on a number of blogs and tutorial sites.
Many aspects of JavaScript code development are taken for granted, and scope is really no different. Of course, in many cases where minimal code is required, variable scope (or function scope) is a non-issue. But if you’re planning to get into larger application development with JavaScript, then you need to understand at least the basics on scope in JavaScript.
Recently, a few blogs and tutorial sites have posted some really good articles on JavaScript tips and best practices, and I thought that was a good topic that could easily be expanded upon. So I put together a list of 10 fairly simple JavaScript tips and best practices of my own.
