February 6, 2000 - The images Array

Yehuda Shiran February 6, 2000
The images Array
Tips: February 2000

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
Doc JavaScript

The document.images object reflects the images on a web page. In a frame-based page, each frame has its own document object.

Not only are all the images in a document packed into one object, but each image is also an object of its own. Thus, you can refer to an image in one of the following ways:

document.images[i] // array notation
document.images.imageName // property notation

Consider the following HTML definition:

<IMG SRC="anything.gif" NAME="anything" 
     HEIGHT="100" WIDTH="100">

Let's suppose the this code defines the third image on the page. The following references reflect that image:

document.images[2] // array notation
document.images.anything // property notation

If you decide to use the array notation, be prepared to change the indices in your scripts whenever you add a new image before an existing one. Therefore, we highly recommend the property notation.

Learn more about using the images array in Column 25, Universal JavaScript Rollovers.