The bulkiness of JavaScript code, beyond long user variable names, comes from the
use of built-in objects such as Window
, Document
, Navigator
, and so on. For example,
given code such as this:
alert(window.navigator.appName);
alert(window.navigator.appVersion);
alert(window.navigator.userAgent);
you could rewrite it as this:
w=window;n=w.navigator;a=alert;
a(n.appName);
a(n.appVersion);
a(n.userAgent);
Commonly, we see people perform remaps of frequently used methods such as
document.getElementById( )
like this:
function $(x){return document.getElementById(x)}
Given the chance for name collision, if you decide to employ such a technique, we would suggest a slight variation, such as this:
function $id(x){return document.getElementById(x)};
function $name(x){return document.getElementsByName(x)}
function $tag(x){return document.getElementsByTagName(x)}
and so on.
Object and method remapping is quite valuable when the remapped items are used repeatedly, which they generally are.