Question

I cam upon this code in an example for the EaselJS library – what it does is it assigns the namespace of the entire createjs library to “window”.

<script>
var createjs = window;
</script>

My question is this:
Is setting the namespace of a library to window a really dumb idea? Doesn’t it just get rid of the whole point of using a namespace by making all the namespaced variable suddenly global scoped?

The only advantage I can see is letting you write shorter contructors for your objects. For example typing:

 stage = new Stage(canvas);

instead of:

 stage = new  createjs.Stage(canvas);

Is this a bad idea, or is is somehow brilliant, or just harmlessly quirky?

Answer 1

A good idea for me is something that should be actively used by many people. And that’s exactly why I consider this trick a bad idea: in short, it actually defeats the idea of namespaces: if many people (= authors of other popular JS libraries) start to use window as their namespace root, the harm of methods overwriting methods overwriting another methods will negate any possible advantages of such approach.