Hi, João-
João Eiras wrote (on 7/29/08 7:10 PM):
The Element Traversal WD define childElementCount on the Element interface.
Personally I see little use for such property by itself.
It would make much more sense to have childElements (similar to
childNodes on Node), and therefore we could use childElements.length to
get the same value as childElementCount. childElements would also be a
live NodeList.
Most use cases for Element only transversal require looping NodeLists,
and if the author still has to filter nodes from these NodeLists by
their nodeType, then that beats the entire purpouse of this specification.
Thanks for your comment. Last Call for this specification is over, but
I appreciate your review nonetheless.
This issue has been discussed at great length (see this thread [1],
among others), and a resolution has been reached. Justification for the
childElementCount attribute, including a concrete use case, in included
in the specification, and the attribute has already been implemented in
multiple user agents.
While many uses of Element Traversal do not require this attribute, I
speak from personal developer experience when I confirm that it is
useful. So, no change to the specification will be made at this late
stage.
[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapi/2008Mar/0226.html
Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Team Contact, WebApps, SVG, and CDF
