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DOM Level 3

necessarily mean that the implementation conforms to all the specifications it claims to. At present time,

the most accurate browser is Mozilla, which more or less actually does conform to the DOM specs that

return

true

for this method.

DOM Level 3

DOM Level 3 was introduced as a W3C Recommendation in April of 2004. To date, no browser has fully

implemented it, although Mozilla has implemented parts. It is unknown at what rate Web browsers will

begin adding their missing DOM features because Internet Explorer hasn’t had an update in nearly four

years (meaning no changes to its level of DOM support). Mozilla has pledged to remain as compliant as

possible moving forward and continues to be the leader in DOM support. However, Opera rewrote its

core browser components to better support the DOM standards and has a newfound zest for keeping

up-to-date with the latest technology. Even Apple’s Safari browser, which is based on Konqueror, is

moving forward with plans to implement as much DOM functionality as possible.

No further development is planned on the DOM after Level 3 rounded out all the missing functionality.

Therefore, browsers now have a finite finish line to reach in order to achieve DOM compliance. One can

only hope that they all reach it someday.

Summary

This chapter introduced the basic interfaces of the Document Object Model (DOM). You learned how the

DOM organizes an XML-based document into a hierarchical tree made up of any number of nodes. You

also learned about the different node type that can be present in a document as well as how to manipu-

late, add, and remove nodes from a DOM tree.

Additionally, this chapter covered HTML DOM-specific features, such as the migrating of attributes into

object properties and table-specific methods that make building HTML easier than using the traditional

DOM methods.

Finally, you learned about the DOM Traversal specification’s

NodeIterator

and

TreeWalker

objects

that can be used to traverse DOM trees in a logical way.

The only major parts of the DOM not covered in this chapter were events and event handling, which are

covered in Chapter 9, “All about Events.”

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