ansaurus

Question

DOM when not an actual document

Answer 1

A:

no... the browser simply acts as a picture viewer

Philippe Leybaert 2009-07-04 16:53:00

but `alert()` works...

Joe 2009-07-04 16:54:06

duh... What does that have to do do with there being a DOM?

Philippe Leybaert 2009-07-04 16:55:55

Answer 2

+3 A:

A quick look with Firebug reveals that yes indeed, there is a DOM and a document object. For example, javascript:alert(document.title) in the location bar gives "logo.gif (GIF Image, 276x110 pixels)". This results from the construction of the following document by the browser:

<html>
    <head>
        <title>logo.gif (GIF Image, 276x110 pixels)</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <img src="http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif" alt="http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif"/&gt;
    </body>
</html>

This is also true in Chrome (with a slightly different string for the title); the HTML is

<html>
    <body style="margin: 0px;">
        <img style="-webkit-user-select: none" src="http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif"&gt;
    </body>
</html>

In IE, it appears that document.title is empty, but javascript:alert(document.body.clientWidth) gives a result equal to the client area of the browser, so it looks like there's a DOM there as well. The HTML is as follows:

<html>
    <head>
        <title></title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <img src="http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif" complete="complete"/>
    </body>
</html>

Domenic 2009-07-04 16:55:58

This is extremely implementation-dependent. Internally, some browsers will build a fake HTML page that will display the picture, but you can't rely on that.

Philippe Leybaert 2009-07-04 16:57:35

If by "some" you mean "all"... (OK, I haven't tested Presto, but we have Gecko, WebKit, and Trident represented here; it's a pretty safe bet.)

Domenic 2009-07-04 17:06:22

You're right that you shouldn't rely on it, however; this is easily the kind of stuff that could be changed in a later version.

Domenic 2009-07-04 17:06:54

Answer 3

+1 A:

It depends on the browser. If you go to that URL in firefox, for example, and open the DOM Inspector, you will see an html, body and img tag; also, typing javascript:alert(document) in the location bar will alert [object ImageDocument]. IE8 exhibits similar behaviour (but alerts just [object]).

Daniel Vandersluis 2009-07-04 16:57:03

ansaurus

tags:

views:

answers:

DOM when not an actual document

related questions