Are there any benefits to using the ‘window’ prefix when calling javascript variables or methods in the window object? For example, would calling ‘window.alert’ have an advantage over simply calling ‘alert’? I can imagine using the prefix could give a small performance boost when the call is made from inside some function/object, however I rarely see this in people’s code. Henceforth this question.
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Answer
I doubt there is any measurable performance benefit. After all the scope chain would be scanned for the identifier window first then the window object would be scanned for the desired item. Hence more likely it would be deterimental to performance.
Using window prefix is useful if you have another variable in scope that would hide the item you may want to retrieve from the window. The question is can you always know when this might be? The answer is no. So should you always prefix with window? What would you code look like if you did that. Ugly. Hence don’t do it unless you know you need to.