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Browser’s implied globals

Like it's not bad enough that JavaScript has implied globals (forget var and you create a global), but the browsers have decided it's a good idea to add more pollution to the global namespace.

This has been a source of frustration before with IE, it's really hard to understand the logic behind it, but it's also happening in other browsers.

Consider this:

<meta name="description" content="test me" />

A normal META tag, right? But in IE this will create in a global variable called "description" pointing to that DOM node. Yep.

alert(description.content); // "test me"

That's pretty annoying. Even more annoying is that getElementById('description') will also point to the DOM node, although it doesn't even have an ID.

A test is born

Anyway, I wanted to test the effect of other name and id attributes in different tags and different browsers. With the exception of Firefox which doesn't create any globals, all other did to some degree. Rather disappointing. I tested IE6, 8 (plus compat view), FF 3.5, Safari 4 and Opera 10.

Here's the test page

And below are the results. The yellow x means that testing for the presence of this global returned "undefined", the white o means that the global variable points to an object. So for example continuing with the meta example above, typeof window.description will return undefined in FF (yellow x) and object in IE (white o).

global description IE FF Saf O
description <meta name="description"... o x x o
robots <meta name="robots"... o x x o
paragraph-id <p id="paragraph-id"... o x o o
paragraph-name <p name="paragraph-name"... x x x o
form-name <form name="form-name"... o x o o
form-id <form id="form-id"... o x o o
input-name <input name="input-name"... x x x x
input-id <input id="input-id"... x x o x
link-name <a name="link-name"... o x x o
link-id <a id="link-id"... o x o o
div-name <div name="div-name"... x x x o
div-id <div id="div-id"... o x o o

So...?

So this is a useless feature if you ask me. Not reliable, not cross-browser, maybe considered convenient back when rollover buttons and animated gifs were all the rage (and animated window.status, remember?), but today can only cause troubles where you least expect it. Should be removed in future browser versions.

For the time being we just have to remember to always declare and initialize our local variables because it looks like someone else might also decide to do so for us. Which can lead to errors if we assume too much.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 and is filed under browsers, firefox, IE, JavaScript. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


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17 Responses to “Browser’s implied globals”

  1. Philip Tellis Says:
    October 20th, 2009 at 1:16 am

    Opera creates window.opera

  2. David Henderson Says:
    October 20th, 2009 at 1:33 am

    Hi Stoyan, for completeness, Google Chrome unsurprisingly mirrors the results from Safari…

    paragraph-id: object
    form-name: object
    form-id: object
    input-id: object
    link-id: object
    div-id: object

  3. Maciej Łebkowski Says:
    October 20th, 2009 at 2:54 am

    I think the most interesting thing is: does those global variables get declared when user inserts node dynamically, from Javascript. This could lead to overwriting existing variables.

    BTW, why can’t I type „dunno” in spam protection field? :-)

  4. Twitter Trackbacks for Browser’s implied globals / Stoyan's phpied.com [phpied.com] on Topsy.com Says:
    October 20th, 2009 at 4:57 am

    [...] Browser’s implied globals / Stoyan’s phpied.com http://www.phpied.com/browser-implied-globals – view page – cached Like it’s not bad enough that JavaScript has implied globals (forget var and you create a global), but the browsers have decided it’s a good idea to add more pollution to the global namespace. — From the page [...]

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  6. Alexandre Morgaut Says:
    October 20th, 2009 at 7:49 am

    Sure this shouldn’t be mapped as implied globals…

    Could we have a “document.meta” collection instead ?
    Or even “document.head.meta” ?

    For the others examples (form, div, input, p, from id or name), it makes me think to forms, elements, anchors, links, and images HTMLCollections

    It is also possible to call (I didn’t already tested it on all browsers) :
    document.forms[form-name].elements[input-name]
    This can provide some unespected results if a form or an input element has some specific name values like:
    – “id”
    – “length”
    – “action”
    – “name”
    …

  7. Stepan Reznikov Says:
    October 20th, 2009 at 4:17 pm

    Hi Stoyan,

    Try changing to and then running console.log(paragraph.tagName) in Firefox. You will get “P” (surprise!) Firefox does this in Quirks mode, but not in Standards mode.

  8. Stepan Reznikov Says:
    October 20th, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    Hi Stoyan,

    Try changing id=”paragraph-id” to id=”paragraph” and then running console.log(paragraph.tagName) in Firefox. You will get “P” (surprise!) Firefox does this in Quirks mode, but not in Standards mode.

  9. Gonzo Says:
    October 20th, 2009 at 5:08 pm

    The issue with name attribute acting as an id in IE is well known for form elements, but not surprisingly it appears valid for any element. I guess the other browsers suffering from this illness just copied the behavior from IE.

  10. Ajaxian » Implied globals in browsers Says:
    October 21st, 2009 at 10:35 am

    [...] Stefanov has done some testing on so called implied globals in browsers. One of the interesting finds was that the meta description is accessible in JavaScript using [...]

  11. Implied globals in browsers | Guilda Blog Says:
    October 21st, 2009 at 4:43 pm

    [...] Stefanov has done some testing on so called implied globals in browsers. One of the interesting finds was that the meta description is accessible in JavaScript using [...]

  12. Implied globals in browsers Says:
    October 26th, 2009 at 8:19 am

    [...] Stefanov has done some testing on so called implied globals in browsers. One of the interesting finds was that the meta description is accessible in JavaScript using [...]

  13. Implied globals in browsers » Intipadi.com - Majalah Sains dan Teknologi Informasi Says:
    October 28th, 2009 at 6:06 pm

    [...] – Stoyan Stefanov has done some testing on so called implied globals in browsers. One of the interesting finds was that the meta description is accessible in JavaScript using [...]

  14. Tech Thursday - packing, shooting, speaking, and pranking your colleagues - ComponentGear.com Feed - ComponentGear.com Says:
    November 4th, 2009 at 8:21 pm

    [...] the footsteps of Firefox and supports WebGL to allow for 3D web development.Did you know that a meta description in IE becomes a global variable in JavaScript? Stoyan Stefanov has done some testing.Cameramouse is an interesting tool that allows you to [...]

  15. Implied globals in browsers - Wasif Hafeez Says:
    November 14th, 2009 at 5:51 am

    [...] Stefanov has done some testing on so called implied globals in browsers. One of the interesting finds was that the meta description is accessible in JavaScript using [...]

  16. peter Says:
    February 27th, 2010 at 4:48 pm

    good work

    however, removing this will never happen. the argument will be “it will break the web”
    But it is a good example of the mess we are in

  17. Iouri Goussev Says:
    December 16th, 2010 at 12:39 pm

    Internet explorer must die, its a plague sent to kill netscape but it also poisoned internet!

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