Writing forward-compatible websites is outdated

[estelle]

MDN URL

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/Writing_forward-compatible_websites

What specific section or headline is this issue about?

javascript

What information was incorrect, unhelpful, or incomplete?

I think we've switched to recommend not using window. and this article recommends using window.
This page needs some modern love.

What did you expect to see?

Modern best practices

Do you have any supporting links, references, or citations?

No response

Do you have anything more you want to share?

No response

MDN metadata

Page report details

• Folder: en-us/web/guide/writing_forward-compatible_websites
• MDN URL: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/Writing_forward-compatible_websites
• GitHub URL: https://github.com/mdn/content/blob/main/files/en-us/web/guide/writing_forward-compatible_websites/index.md
• Last commit: 0df8a56
• Document last modified: 2022-08-12T19:08:31.000Z

[teoli2003]

I think we've switched to recommend not using window. and this article recommends using window. This page needs some modern love.

It is a bit more complex than this. If you speak about something related to the window, you still prefix it. I would say window.onload for example, meaning code to execute once the window and its content has loaded (that is, the UI).

But if you speak about something on the global scope, like setInterval(), you don't prefix it or, if you copy and paste the line (for whatever reason), into a worker or a service worker, it won't work anymore (as there is no window). By not prefixing it, or prefixing it with self. it will work in both places.

[rubiesonthesky]

I was looking this another day and was confused about this section, https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/Writing_forward-compatible_websites#avoid_missing . Is leaving out ">" a convention that people were doing? You can write all sorts of incorrect syntax that will seem to work in browser. But highlighting just one example feels weird. Writing correct syntax should not be just future proofing but good practice always anyway. I think it would make more sense to me, if the emphasis would be that "write correct syntax AND use some validation tool to find trivial mistakes". And then links / mentions where you could find more info about that.

[Josh-Cena]

The point about "qualify your globals" is still fair. We could recommend globalThis if it helps with portability, but I think it's just talking about web here anyway?