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Browser-Neutral Code for Referring Style Objects

Browser-Neutral Code for Referring Style Objects

Programming with style sheets is never an easy task if you want to write browser-neutral HTML code. This is because the DOM (Document Object Model) of the Internet Explorer and the DOM of Netscape Navigator browsers are not the same. But don’t despair?here is a code fragment that shows how you can write browser-neutral JavaScript code uniquely for referring to styles of HTML objects like DIV, SPAN, etc.

 var ie = (navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer"); // myStyleObj is used to refer the style object of elem1 in the HTML page myStyleObj = ie ? document.all.elem1.style : document.elem1;

Now, anywhere in the code where you want to refer to the style object attribute, all you need to do is refer to myStyleObj.

  myStyleObj.visibility = "visible"; instead of writing... document.elem1.visibility = "visible"; // for Netscape Navigator and, document.all.elem1.style.visibility = "visible"; // for Internet Explorer 

This saves you from lots of browser compatibility issues, and it also helps you to write structured code. Also, it is a good idea to keep an array of style objects (of the HTML tags of our interest), in the beginning, and refer to them by using an appropriate index whenever required.

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