How and when do browsers implement real-time changes to a document's DOM?
- by Mark
My website dynamically embeds an external Javascript file into the head tag. The external Javascript defines a global variable myString = "data". At what point does myString become accessible to Javascript within the website?
<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
myString = null;
external = document.createElement("script");
//externalScript.js is one line, containing the following:
//myString = "data";
external.setAttribute("src", "externalScript.js");
external.setAttribute("type", "text/javascript");
document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].append(external);
alert(myString);
<script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
This code alerts null (when I thought it would alert "data") in Chrome and IE, even though the DOM has loaded in externalScript.js at this point. When is externalScript.js actually evaluated by the browser and at what point do I have access to the new value of myString?
