What are the drawbacks of accessing DOM elements directly by ID?

Question

Today I stumbled upon the possibility to access a DOM element in Javascript simply by its id e.g. like this:

elementid.style.backgroundColor = \"blue\"
         


        

Answer 1

It is propriety Microsoft gubbins. It doesn't work in lots of browsers — especially in standards mode (and you want standards mode to avoid quirks mode inconsistencies such as IE getting width wrong).