Benjamin Orchard

First, off, I like your tutorial on the DOM, and your site in 
general--its one of the most useful descriptions of the DOM that I've 
encountered. 

I am not javascript coder usually, but this particular page seems to 
need it.  If you can spare the time to take a look at the attached file 
(and my ensuing description, I would really appreciate it.
I have this page, but it doesn't function exactly as expected (ignore 
looks--I am not going to post my css--too much work!).

In the form 'editMS', the user first selects a media type, which then 
displays the appropriate div (and select box) that allows them to select 
the actual media source (which would be a newspaper or radio station).  
This much works.  The user is then supposed to be able to select the 
actual source, and have the sources current status show up, which they 
could then edit.  This second part does not work, because in the 
javascript function 'getOptionSelected' there is the code 
'document.editMS.media' (and its used several times).  So I have 
identified the problem (easy enough).  What I don't know how to do is 
fix it (not a javascript programmer).  This could all be done in PHP and 
page reloads, but I am trying to cut down on server load by using only 
one load. 

At one point I thought that the document.editMS.media(opt_group) could 
be replaced by document.getElementByID('opt_group'), but I can't quite 
get the syntax/method down.  I think its a function of spending far too 
much time playing with databases and PHP, but maybe not. 

If you  can help me fix this, I would deeply appreciate it.

Thanks
Ben Orchard

Mark,
thanks for the advice--I had actually forgotton about the id/name token 
rules, and am actually pulling from a database.  I'll have to rethink my 
strategy just a bit, but that's another story.

I'll let you know how it turns out once I have gotten a littlle further 
on this.

Ben

Mark,
I have it working now, and thank you for your help.  Now, if you don't 
mind, there is one minor question.

in this snippet,
function getOptionSelected(opt_group){
       return 
document.editMS[opt_group].options[document.editMS[opt_group].selectedIndex].value;
     }

editMS is the name of the form.  Is there a way to make this so that I 
can just pass the name of the form as a variable to the code, and have 
it use that?  Or rather, I am sure that there is a way, but I don't know 
what it is, can you help me out on this (which seems simple enough, but 
it is important that I know).

I am going to guess here and go with this:
function getOptionSelected(form_name, opt_group){
       return 
document[form_name][opt_group].options[document[form_name][opt_group].selectedIndex].value;
     }

Like I said, I'm pretty lost when it comes to javascript.

Ben

Thanks again, BTW--you've helped me a lot!