Why can't I access child frame elements with the direct form?

[Robert Oschler]

I have a document that contains a child frame with name/id = "help_frame".
From Javascript in the top level document I can access the child frame's
elements using:

var elem = document.frames.help_frame.document.getElementById("chkSynonym");

but if I try:

var elem = document.frames.help_frame.document.chkSynonym;

the result is 'undefined'.

What is wrong with my syntax?

thx

 

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

var elem = document.frames.help_frame.document.getElementById("chkSynonym");

I believe it is more correct to use "window.frames...". E.g., Mozilla
doesn't have "document.frames".

but if I try:
var elem = document.frames.help_frame.document.chkSynonym;
the result is 'undefined'.

What is wrong with my syntax?

The syntax is fine. Maybe the browser simply doesn't make named
elements available as properties of the document element (or maybe
just not all of them). There is no standard that requires it to do so.

If getElementById works, use it.

/L