JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Fourth Edition

Name

Sample Entry — how to read client-side reference pages

Availability

Availability

Inherits from/Overrides

Inherits from

Title and Short Description

Every reference entry begins with a four-part title block like that above. The entries are alphabetized by title. The short description, shown below the title, gives you a quick summary of the item documented in the entry; it can help you quickly decide if you’re interested in reading the rest of the page.

Availability

The availability information is shown in the upper-right corner of the title block. This information tells you when a class, method, or event handler was introduced. For some less portable items, this section specifies which versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer support it. If the item is well supported by web browsers and support was added by Netscape and IE within the same browser generation, this section specifies its availability in terms of a version of core JavaScript. You can use the tables in Chapter 1 to determine the particular releases of Netscape and Internet Explorer to which these versions correspond. Of course, since most properties do not have their own reference pages, they do not have availability information. If the availability of a property is different from the availability of the class that defines it, however, this fact is noted in the description of the property.

Inherits from

If a class inherits from a superclass, that information is shown in the lower-right corner of the title block. As described ...