Question

With the following bit of code –

var myEl = document.getElementById('myElement');
myEl.ownerDocument.defaultView;

does getting to the original window via ownerDocument.defaultView mean that I’m traversing up the DOM from the myEl element to the document and then to the window?

Answer 1

It’s not really traversing, per se.

Every DOM object has an ownerDocument property. This is the document that the node is associated with, if any.

Every document object has a defaultView property (provided your browser supports it — not true in IE <9). This is the window object where the document is shown, if any,.

So it’s really just reading a couple of properties from objects, rather than traversal.