Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / JavaScript / November 2006

Hi

DOM (Document Object Model) generally refers to the whole range of
objects which browsers make available to script to manipulate HTML and
XML documents.  Take a look at <URL:http://www.w3.org/DOM/> for the
standards.

A DOM object I would interpret as being any one of the objects forming
part of that range.  Thus an HTML "P" element is a DOM object that
implements the HTMLParagraphElement interface.

Equally some may use DOM object to refer just to the object which is
the root of the XML or HTML document, i.e. which implements Document
(if XML) and HTMLDocument as well (if HTML) interfaces.

In which case this may be "window.document", or the XML document
returned by the responseXML property of the XmlHttpRequest object.

Regards

Julian

responseXML on a XMLHttpRequest/XMLHTTP object gives you an XML DOM
document.
window.document gives you an HTML DOM document in IE and in Mozilla and
Opera it will depend on the type of document sent, it can be a HTML DOM
document, an XML DOM document, an SVG DOM document (or a XUL document).