Tech Info - W3C DOM

Probably THE major change in client side scripting in this millennium IOHO (well so far at least). Very powerful and as more browsers adopt it (with varying degrees of compatibility - the so called version 5 browsers) we should be able to do more interesting things with it. These pages were originally written in 2002/2003 timescale and indeed AJAX/COMET was the major innovation that came from the DOM - javascript being just the vehicle.

We decided try and get a serious grip on this technology back in 2003. Actually that's not quite true. There is so much of it that we couldn't see the wood for the trees. We had to read stuff - lots of it. So we created an overview, started our user guide to document the usage that current documentation didn't include and started some experimentation (page explorer) before we understood what it could do. Very much a work in progress like much of the stuff on this site. We'll probably look back and grimace at our ignorance (tomorrow). Scary 'cos of its size and scope but VERY, VERY important. Worth taking the time - we think you'll be using this stuff for years to come. Think AJAX/COMET here.

Why spend the time on the W3C DOM if the current stuff works: The danger is we assume that all that effort spent to overcome the old cross-browser limitations (proprietary DOMs) was actually useful instead of an annoying side-line to the real job of creating a great user experience on the site. We plan in the first phase to completely re-work our drop-down, pop-out menus to provide a smaller volume of data and tighter code. After that, frankly, we're not quite sure ......

NOTE: We based the initial work on Mozilla/Gecko because the W3C DOM-2 support is good and the tools are great. We'll get to MSIE one day Real Soon Now™.

Problems, comments, suggestions, corrections (including broken links) or something to add? Please take the time from a busy life to 'mail us' (at top of screen), the webmaster (below) or info-support at zytrax. You will have a warm inner glow for the rest of the day.