Availability

JavaScript 1.0

Synopsis

document.open( ) 
document.open(mimetype)

Arguments

mimetype

An optional string argument that specifies the type of data to be written to and displayed in document. The value of this argument should be one of the standard MIME types that the browser understands ("text/html", "text/plain", "image/gif", "image/jpeg", and "image/x-bitmap" for Netscape) or some other MIME type that can be handled by an installed plugin. If this argument is omitted, it is taken to be "text/html". This argument is ignored by IE 3, which always assumes a document of type "text/html". This argument is also not supported in the standard W3C DOM version of this method. See the HTMLDocument.open( ) entry in the DOM reference section.

Description

The document.open( ) method opens a stream to document so subsequent document.write( ) calls can append data to the document. The optional mimetype argument specifies the type of data to be written and tells the browser how to interpret that data.

If any existing document is displayed when the open( ) method is called, it is automatically cleared by the call to open( ) or by the first call to write( ) or writeln( ). After opening a document with open( ) and writing data to it with write( ), you should complete the document by calling close( ).

Usage

You usually call Document.open( ) with no argument to open an HTML document. Occasionally, a "text/plain" document is useful, for example, for a pop-up window of debugging messages.

See Also

Document.close( ), Document.write( ); HTMLDocument.open( ) in the DOM reference section