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DOM Level 3 Core requires returning a new NodeList every time from getElementsByTagName and getElementsByTagNameNS: http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core/core.html#ID-A6C9094 http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core/core.html#ID-getElBTNNS HTML5 does not have this requirement for getElementsByName and getElementsByClassName, which would in theory allow the same NodeList to be returned when called on the same Document or Element with the same parameters: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#dom-document-getelementsbyname http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#dom-document-getelementsbyclassname While I would like caching to be allowed, the divergence from DOM 3 Core seems unintentional.
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Partially Accepted Change Description: see diff given below Rationale: I've tried to close up any such ambiguities where I could find them. I posted to public-webapps about the approach I took.
Checked in as WHATWG revision r4702. Check-in comment: Define whether these methods and attributes return the same object or a different object each time they are called. http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=4701&to=4702