Web Standards Programmer's Reference: HTML, CSS, JavaScript®, Perl, Python®, and PHP

Chapter 21. The Document Object Model

Most Web programmers are familiar with Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and the underlying Document Object Models developed by Netscape and Microsoft for their respective browsers. However, there is a unifying Document Object Model (DOM) developed by the W3C that is less well known and, hence, used less often. The W3C DOM has several advantages over the DHTML DOM — using its node structure it is possible to easily navigate and change documents despite the user agent used to display them. This chapter covers the basics of the W3C DOM and oldchild) teaches you how to use JavaScript to manipulate it.

The W3C DOM is much more complex than shown within this chapter. There are several additional methods and properties at your disposal to use in manipulating documents, many more than we have room to address in this chapter. Further reading and information on the standard can be found on the W3C Web site at http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/WD-DOM-Level-1-20000929/Overview.html. The next chapter covers the details of the DHTML DOM.