Re: Proposal: getElementsBySelector()

On Feb 6, 2007, at 3:29 PM, Martijn wrote:

> On 2/7/07, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>> Is there a major benefit to having a single method that outweighs the
>> performance considerations? I think we should have a better reason  
>> for
>> deciding this than "we feel like it".
>
> I don't see why a getElementBySelector is necessary when there is
> alreay getElementById, which one should use if performance is an
> issue.
> So for me it's not a "I feel like it", but rather the other way  
> around.

XPath DOM has both selectNodes and selectSingleNode. It's likely that  
whether or not these become part of the XPath DOM standard, all  
browsers will implement them since Microsoft has made them a de facto  
standard. I think we should aim for the Selectors API to make  
Selectors as easy and convenient to use as XPath expressions.

I am disappointed that the standards process has ended up with an API  
that has much longer names and now is proposing to get rid of one of  
the basic operations that make the API easier to use. This gives the  
impression that inventing APIs unilaterally and then pushing then as  
de facto standards results in more author-friendly API than the  
design by committee of the W3C standards process.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Wednesday, 7 February 2007 01:26:01 UTC