element access

[chuvak]

Hi,

I am having troubles understanding how those NAME and ID attributes work.

For example if I have a form

<form name="f1">... <table><tr><td><input name="i1"...
then I can access that input by document.f1.i1

if instead of a form there was a div, then it wouldn't work and I 'd have to put a name on each parent tag of my input in order to access it like this:

<div name="d1">... <table name="t2"><tr name="tr"><td name="td"><input name="i1"...

document.d1.t2.tr.td.i1

Why is this the case? Do forms handle NAMEs in a special way?
Same with IDs. If I don't want to use getElementById will I have to give an ID to each tag that encloses the tag I want to access?

thanks in advance

[Khalid Ali]

form element has parent child relationship with input element so you can access it like that.
document.form.child...

where is table is not a direct child of div element....tables are painted as individual objects in a window.