meta tag names become globals

[adambankin]

URL: http://www.shutterstock.com
Browser: IE
Version: 7-11
Problem type: Looks like the browser has a bug
Site owner: Unknown

Steps to Reproduce

1. Navigate to: http://www.shutterstock.com
2. Open the Developer Tools
3. Go to the console and type alert(description) or alert(keywords) or alert(ROBOTS)
4. The meta tag that has that name will be returned as a DOM Element

Expected Behavior: Returns a reference error
Actual Behavior: Returns a META HTMLElement

[simevidas]

This behavior is specced in HTML: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/browsers.html#named-access-on-the-window-object

It's been a while since I checked the details, but in a nutshell, for any element with an id or name attribute, the browser will create a corresponding global property referencing that element. Chrome and Firefox had this too, but it looks like they removed it. Good move. Maybe this should be removed from the HTML spec.

[adambankin]

That's incredibly interesting that an ID in HTML could become a global object in JavaScript.

I'll take a look at the spec and test whether my IDs are appearing as globals in IE too.

Thanks Šime!

[miketaylr]

Here's a good blog post that summarizes how this works as well: http://www.2ality.com/2012/08/ids-are-global.html

[karlcow]

@TheWebJustWorks might be interested.

[karlcow]

Let's. Close. it. With the full support and love of @hallvors.