16224 2012-03-04 00:14:17 +0000 Change .readyState to use string values rather than numeric constants 2012-03-13 03:57:52 +0000 1 1 1 Unclassified WebAppsWG HISTORICAL - Server-Sent Events (editor: Ian Hickson) unspecified PC All RESOLVED WONTFIX P2 normal --- 1 jonas ian ian mike public-webapps public-webapps-bugzilla oldest_to_newest 64986 0 jonas 2012-03-04 00:14:17 +0000 Numeric constants sucks when used in javascript. Code like if (es.readyState == EventSource.CONNECTING) { ... } is both harder to read and harder to type compared to if (es.readyState == "connecting") { ... } All the uppercase letters are a pain to type and and stick out like a sore thumb. Additionally there's a very real risk that people will write code like if (ws.readyState == 0) { ... } since '0' is so much easier to write than 'EventSource.CONNECTING'. It's even likely that comparing to a string is faster than comparing to EventSource.CONNECTING since the latter involves a property lookup. 65433 1 ian 2012-03-13 03:57:52 +0000 While I agree with the design principle, I think it's not a big enough win to be worth the churn here. People complain all the time that we keep changing things — we should only do it when we have a truly compelling reason (e.g. a security problem). In practice, little non-debug code will likely end up using eventsource.readyState anyway. It's easier to use the events. It was mostly added for consistency with XMLHttpRequest, which also uses numbers — and people don't generally find it onerous to remember which readyState is which for that API.