Is there really no way to expose the prototype of a html element in IE (<8)?

Question

I cooked up a pattern to create and extend html elements using their prototype. This works like a charm in non-ie browsers. Example code can be found @jsbin (see page source)

The advantage of this pattern should be speed (the methods are in the elements prototype chain, so they are referenced once). You guessed right: IE no go. In IE < 8 the prototype of html elements is hidden/not accessible, so for every element you create, you have to reference the non standard methods again (leaving you with a lot of pointers if you use the pattern intensively). I have searched the web for solutions, but only found complex workarounds. Is there really no way to access a html elements prototype in IE?

Answer 1

Yes there really is no way to do this.

IE elements are based COM objects which actually don't allow arbitary members to be added to their interfaces (in COM, interfaces are a contract and should never change). Implementation of these interfaces cannot be extended by Javscript, the elements simply are not prototypal.

IE adds a special interface designed to work with javascript to allow the addition of new members to a specific instance but you cannot add a new member to 'class' since there is no prototype to fiddle with.

Answer 2

No, nor is it guaranteed you can fiddle with DOM objects' prototypes in JavaScript in general. The DOM objects are not part of the ECMAScript spec; they may not be (and traditionally speaking aren't) native JavaScript Objects at all, in any browser.

This is why frameworks tend to have their own ‘container’ wrapper classes.

Also you cannot rely on ‘t.el.constructor’ even if they were native JS Objects. ‘constructor’ is not a standard property, isn't available in IE, and even in Mozilla doesn't do what you might think it does. Avoid.