Simon Willison’s Weblog

Don’t use document.all

I’ve lost count of the number of Javascript scripts I’ve seen floating around that include the equivalent of the following code snippet:

if (document.all) {
   element = document.all[id];
else {
   element = document.getElementById(id);
}

document.all was introduced in Internet Explorer 4, because the W3C DOM hadn’t yet standardised a way of grabbing references to elements using their ID. By the time IE 5 came out, document.getElementById() had been standardised and as a result, IE 5 included support for it.

IE 5 was released in September 1998. A popular browser statistics site (insert usual disclaimer as to the reliability of any stats but your own here) show IE 4’s market share to be in the region of 1%. Even Netscape 4 has more users than that!

Don’t use document.all. document.getElementById() is supported by every Javascript supporting browser released since 1998.