Browser-compat-data: api.Element.name entry doesn't make sense as used on MDN

[foolip]

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element/name says:

name gets or sets the name property of an element in the DOM. It only applies to the following elements: <a>, <applet>, <button>, <form>, <frame>, <iframe>, <img>, <input>, <map>, <meta>, <object>, <param>, <select>, and <textarea>.

Note: The name property doesn't exist for other elements; unlike tagName and nodeName, it is not a property of the Node, Element or HTMLElement interfaces.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element/name#Browser_compatibility however is not a useful table for this page, because BCD correctly reflects that there's no name attribute on Element in any browser.

@ddbeck how should one handle a case like this? Should the MDN page instead link to the tables for the elements that do support it?

[ddbeck]

Yeah, this is super weird. There isn't an Element.name attribute, but there is an HTMLFormElement.name and HTMLImageElement.name and so on.

And looking at the history of the page, @sideshowbarker's comment on the most recent edit is probably right:

The Element interface actually has no 'name' attribute (this entire article should be deleted…)

My hunch is that we should make a brief check to make sure there was no historic Element.name (e.g., that some previous DOM spec doesn't contain that attribute).

If it did exist, then we could slap a deprecation notice on the page and refer people to the list of individual HTML*Element.name pages (example).

If not, then we could archive the page and drop the Element.name data from BCD.

[saschanaz]

DOM1/2/3 had no Element.name definition:

• https://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core/core.html#ID-745549614
• https://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Core/core.html#ID-745549614
• https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1/level-one-core.html#ID-745549614

[ddbeck]

Thanks for checking that, @saschanaz.

My earlier suggestion was slightly incomplete. Here are the steps to fix this:

• [x] Archive Element.name page
• [ ] Drop the feature api.Element.name as irrelevant
• [ ] Add features for the real api.HTML*Element.name attributes

[foolip]

Thanks @ddbeck, that sounds great! Will you check back here when the page has been archived? I can try to do points 2 and 3 from your list.

[ddbeck]

@foolip Yes, I'll update this issue as soon as I've archived the page. 👍

[ddbeck]

@foolip OK, on the advice of @chrisdavidmills, I redirected the page to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API (instead of archiving or deleting). We're now good to drop api.Element.name from BCD

[foolip]

I've sent https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/pull/6751 to remove the api.Element.name as irrelevant.

Here are the 17 HTML element interfaces that have name attributes in the HTML spec's IDL:

• [ ] [HTMLAnchorElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLAnchorElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLButtonElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLButtonElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLEmbedElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLEmbedElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLFieldSetElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLFieldSetElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLFormElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLFormElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLFrameElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLFrameElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLIFrameElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLIFrameElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLImageElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLImageElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLInputElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLInputElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLMapElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLMapElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLMetaElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLMetaElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLObjectElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLObjectElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLOutputElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLOutputElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLParamElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLParamElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLSelectElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLSelectElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLSlotElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLSlotElement#Browser_compatibility)
• [ ] [HTMLTextAreaElement](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLTextAreaElement#Browser_compatibility)

The name entry exists on most but not all of these, and there are other consistency problems to work through, like whether they should be marked deprecated or not.