- From: David Williams <djw@avantgo.com>
- Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 13:18:55 -0800
- To: John Whelan <whelan@itp.unibe.ch>
- CC: www-dom@w3.org
John Whelan posted on this topic about two weeks ago, and I have exactly the same query. As John seemed to nail the argument exactly, I'll just quote his post: John Whelan wrote: > > I'm confused about the selected and defaultSelected attributes of the > HMTLOptionElement interface in the the DOM Level One spec > http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1/level-one-html.html#ID-70901257 > > According to the spec, defaultSelected is read-write and "Stores the > initial value of the selected attribute", while selected is read-only > and "Means that this option is initially selected. See the selected > attribute definition in HTML 4.0." > > Now, with the exception of the definition given for defaultSelected, > this seems to be reversed from the JavaScript definitions of these two > attributes. In JavaScript, defaultSelected is read-only, and is set > by the value of the OPTION element's SELECTED attribute, while > selected is read-write, and determines whether the option is selected > (either by the user or by a scripting event). > > The DOM spec appears to be in error (or at least nonsensical) here: > if selected is a read-only attribute declaring whether the Option is > initially selected, then what's the point of having a defaultSelected > attribute which stores its initial value (and is read-write, to boot)? > > John T. Whelan > whelan@iname.com > http://www.slack.net/~whelan/ I agree that the DOM spec seems counter intuitive, and at odds with JavaScript. Can we assume it's just a typo? djw
Received on Friday, 27 November 1998 16:18:12 UTC