The Object element allows you to include controls and applets that extend the browser. For example, you can create objects to embed graphs or even other documents directly into the document. An object may have its own properties, methods, and events, which the Object element exposes to scripts in the same way that it exposes its own members.
A conflict can occur between the object's members and the members of a generic Object element. For example, if the object exposes an id property, it will collide with the id property exposed on the Object element. When this conflict occurs, referencing the id property references the element's version, not the object's. For referencing the object's version of the id property, all object elements expose an object property. This property returns access to the embedded object's members, as shown in the following code.
document.all.myObject.id // HTML element's id property document.all.myObject.object.id // Embedded object's id property
The Object element can contain HTML code that is displayed in browsers that do not support the Object element. The down-level contents are exposed as an altHTML property of the Object element in HTML.
The altHTML property can be used to provide contents to the user if the object fails to install. If the object fails to install, the alternative contents replace the object on the page. In the following code, the value of the Object element's altHTML property is the Paragraph element (the <P> and </P> tags and the text between):
<OBJECT CLASSID="java:myClass"> <PARAM NAME="color" VALUE="red"> <P> Either your browser does not support the Object element or an error occurred while downloading the object. </P> </OBJECT>
An object can fire its own custom events. You can bind a handler to such an event using the <SCRIPT FOR= EVENT= > syntax or a language-dependent mechanism, but not using an attribute in the element's tag. The Object element exposes attributes for only those events that are predefined, not for events that the embedded object may fire.
Objects that expose standard events such as mouse and keyboard events can also take part in event bubbling. The object itself fires its standard event, followed by the browser firing the event on every parent element. Generic event handlers for standard events can test whether they originated in an object.