Give better error messages when properties are accessed on global empty DOM interfaces

[DanielRosenwasser]

https://twitter.com/rauschma/status/1181852019264503808

We should give a more helpful message when missing "lib": ["dom"].

If accessing a property on a type that was

• empty and
• declared in the global scope and
• named after a pattern that matches /^HTML\w+Element$/

it is likely a forward declaration for DOM environments, and we should provide an error message like:

Property '{0}' does not exist on type '{1}'. Did you forget to include "dom" in your "lib" setting?

Bonus: would be awesome if we could provide related spans in a tsconfig.json/jsconfig.json to say

The 'lib' option was specified here.

[m-henderson]

@kyliau did you plan on picking this back up?

[kyliau]

@kyliau did you plan on picking this back up?

I think you meant @kylejlin

[kylejlin]

@m-henderson No, I do not plan on picking this back up. You're welcome to take over, if that's why you're asking.

[m-henderson]

Sorry about that @kyliau, your names are similar at first glance. Thanks for the response @kylejlin

[kyeb]

I just spent 30+ minutes stuck on this error -- would love to see something like this get added so others don't go down that rabbit hole.

In my case, the cryptic error was Property 'value' does not exist on type 'EventTarget & HTMLInputElement', for a simple React onChange={(e) => setNewValue(e.target.value)}.