Avoiding Casting

PowerUI 2 has a standardised DOM. That means that methods like getElementById return an Element rather than the more useful HtmlElement, which results in a lot of casting that previously wasn't required.

Why does it happen at all?

HTML5 can have content like SVG and MathML embedded within it; an SvgElement is not a HtmlElement. However, the vast majority of the time, you'll be interacting with a HtmlElement (and on the web, Javascript hides this from you).

Convenience functions

If you find an instance where a convenience function would be useful, please let us know!

Document

(these ones have the bonus of being a little shorter too - just omit the word Element from the standard Web API)

Standard name	Convenience name	What it does
getElementById	getById	Element to HtmlElement
getElementByTagName	getByTagName	Element to HtmlElement
getElementByAttribute	getByAttribute	Element to HtmlElement

Event

Standard name	Convenience name	What it does
target	htmlTarget	Element to HtmlElement

Element

Standard name	Convenience name	What it does
parentNode	htmlParentNode	Node to HtmlElement
document	htmlDocument	Document to HtmlDocument

NodeList

E.g. childNodes uses these

Standard name	Convenience name	What it does
item(x)	htmlItem(x)	Node to HtmlElement

HTMLCollection

Poorly named by the specification; these are collections of Element objects.

Standard name	Convenience name	What it does
item(x)	htmlItem(x)	Element to HtmlElement