Re: [Dynapi-Help] How the Dynapi writes layers/divs to the browser

[Josh Chu]

Thank you! This has definitely shed some light on this for me.  It turns out that the DynAPI does actually write the <DIV> tag contents to the browser, which is what I've seen done before.  Just looking at specificCreate, this isn't entirely obvious...I had thought the DynAPI was using Javascript to manipulate/add to the DOM directly, and not through adding the <DIV> tags through some sort of document.write or innerHTML. Here's my trace through on how the DynAPI creates layers: 1) It calls the line parentElement.insertAdjacentHTML("beforeEnd",this.getOuterHTML()); or some other such variant for other browsers.  2) This will build a string which contains the <DIV> or <LAYER> (ns4) tags 3) This string is appended to the parent.  This is the equivalent of doing a document.write("<DIV props>...</DIV>") in the parent element. This is great! Thanks! --JC ----- Original Message ----- From: Doug Melvin To: Josh Chu ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 26, 2001 9:50 AM Subject: Re: [Dynapi-Help] How the Dynapi writes layers/divs to the browser I didn't mean to indicate that your question was silly. Only that the answers are there to be found. If you didn't understand what you read, we probably can't help you.. I mean that you'd be better off reading an advanced Javascript totorial.   Alright: ns6 file://note: I am not very strong on DOM, someone may want to correct me or fill in the blanks       file://find the parent of the new layer   var parentElement=(this.parent.isDynLayer)?this.parent.elm:this.parent.doc.body;     //add a 'range' to the parent : same as adding an element? Maybe an empty HTML element   var r = parentElement.ownerDocument.createRange();     //I assume this tells the 'range' where in the document it starts   r.setStartBefore(parentElement);     //create the HTML layer element (<div> or <layer>)   var ptxt = r.createContextualFragment(this.getOuterHTML());     //probably add's it to the document   parentElement.appendChild(ptxt);     //DynAPI stuff..     //This allows DynAPI internal code to acces the object's JS Object     //(the DynLayer is actualy an object that contains a Layer object)   this.elm=parentElement.lastChild;     //gives DynAPI direct access to the CSS properties of the layer object   this.css=this.elm.style;     //give a reference to the object's document   this.doc=this.parent.doc;   --- IE: //uses Microsft DOMish syntax to create the layer:     //find a reference to the parent of the new layer   var parentElement=(this.parent.isDynLayer)?this.parent.elm:this.parent.doc.body;     //create the HTML layer element (<div> or <layer>)   parentElement.insertAdjacentHTML("beforeEnd",this.getOuterHTML());     //obtain a reference to the actual layer object   this.elm=parentElement.children[parentElement.children.length-1];     //obtain a reference to the new layer's CSS attributes   this.css=this.elm.style;     //Obtain a reference to the new Layer's document   this.doc=this.parent.doc;   And I think you said you understood the NS4 stuff.. I should add that to avoid memory leaks in NS4, any layers that area deleted are put into and array instead of being actually deleted so that they can be re-used the next time we need a layer.