Is setting properties on the Window object considered bad practice?

Question

I\'m writing a quite complex JavaScript application that has an MVC architecture that I\'m implementing using Prototype\'s Class support and the Module pattern. The applicat

Answer 1

Setting properties on the window object is equivalent to creating global variables. That is, sometimes doing it is inevitable, but you should try to keep it to a bare minimum, as it ends up polluting the global namespace.

In your case, creating a single property is not so bad. If you want to be extra careful about it, you can explicitly create a namespace for any stuff you need global access to:

// In init:
var mynamespace = {};

. . .

// Once the controller is available:
var namespace = window.mynamespace;
namespace.controller = controller;
namespace.foo = bar; // Set other stuff here as well.