[webkit-dev] Differentiating between JS object properties and DOM attributes

[Christian Cantrell]

I recently noticed something that surprised me in a new build of  
WebKit.  I found that some dashboard widgets don't run, including  
some Apple widgets like Stocks.  When I investigated, I found that  
some widgets access custom DOM attributes using dot notation rather  
than the getAttribute function.  For instance, with HTML like this...

<table>
	<tr id="tr" foo="bar">
		<td>hi.</td>
	</tr>
</table>

... they might access the value of foo like this...

document.getElementById("tr").foo;

... rather than this...

var tr = document.getElementById("tr").getAttribute('foo');

I understand that this is considered a "fix" or a move toward more  
standardization, but I'm worried that this will break a lot of  
existing content, including some dashboard widgets written by Apple.   
Does anyone have an insight into this issue?  Will everyone just need  
to update their content when Leopard comes out?

Thanks,
Christian