Righty oh! I've been asked to research the term 'DOM'. Well, to be quite honest, I had never heard of it. Soooo, I looked it up in the funk and wagnalls and came across some information from the following sites;

http://www.w3schools.com/dom/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Object_Model


http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Gecko_DOM_Reference:Introduction#What_is_the_DOM.3F

Firstly, what is DOM you may well ask?

In it's simplest form it is Document Object Model and is a standard platform and language which allows the manipulation of content, structure and style of XML and HTML documents.

With DOM, a document is presented as a tree structure.

Apparently, 'DOM is best used for applications where the document elements have to be accessed and manipulated in an unpredictable sequence and repeatedly.'

There are three (3) levels of DOM;

1. Core DOM - defines a standard set of objects for any structured document
2. XML DOM - defines a standard set of objects for XML documents
3. HTML DOM - defines a standard set of objects for HTML documents

According to Wikipedia,

'As of 2005, large parts of W3C DOM are well supported by common JavaScript-enabled web browsers including Internet Explorer 5 and 6 and Gecko-based browsers like Mozilla and Firefox.'

However, http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/DOM.html state;

'Unfortunately, the two leading browsers -- Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer -- use different DOMs. This is one reason why their respective implementations of DHTML are so different. Both companies have submitted their DOMs to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for standardization, which now has the daunting task of specifying a standard DOM without alienating either of the browser giants. The W3C's DOM specification will support both HTML and XML.'

If you would like to learn about DOM in more detail go to http://www.w3.org/DOM/faq.html