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JavaScript

April 01, 2004

Understanding Client-Side Scripting By Sheryl Canter, www.pcmag.com

To stem the chaos, the W3C stepped in with a DOM standard for HTML and XML. DOM Level 1, which was completed in October 1998, focuses on basic navigation and manipulation functions. Level 2, completed in November 2000, adds support for XML namespaces, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and user interface events. Level 3, which is still under development, will offer enhanced XML support and other advanced features.

But defining a standard is not the same as getting vendors to use it. So far Mozilla, the open-source version of Netscape Navigator (www.mozilla.org) has the most compliant DOM support, implementing most of Level 2. Microsoft did not support the W3C standard until Internet Explorer 6, which supports Level 1. Adding to developer stress is the fact that Microsoft's current proprietary implementation has some nice features that the W3C version lacks....

The best tools for JavaScript development are built into Mozilla. The Mozilla DOM Inspector displays the DOM tree and flashes the selected element in the rendered Web page, which it displays in the lower window. Mozilla also has a JavaScript console and a debugger.

Scripts in HTML documents (W3C)

W3C Document Object Model

mozilla - home of the mozilla, firefox, and camino web browsers

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