Question

Is there any reason why I’m not able to see object values from JavaScript using Firefox, but IE and Chrome see them without problem?

For example:

<div>
<input type="text" id="clientID" />
<input type="submit" id="search" value="Submit" class="submitButton" />
</div>

JavaScript:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function () {
        $("#searchDisputes").click(function () {
              if(clientID.value.toString() != "") {
                    //do something
              }
        }
}
</script>

Firefox tells me that clientID does not exist, however IE and Chrome work just fine.

I am able to access it using jQuery $("#clientID"), but before changing a good bit of code around, I would like to understand why this doesn’t work in Firefox, but works ok in other browsers.

Answer 1

You are assuming that giving an element an id will create a global variable with the same name as the id containing a reference to the element. There is no reason browsers should do this.