The Theory Of The Dom

The Misconceived Web The original vision of the WWW was as a hyperlinked document-retrieval system. It did not anticipate presentation, session, or interactivity. If the WWW were still consistent with TBL's original vision, Yahoo would still be two guys in a trailer.

How We Got Here Rule Breaking Corporate Warfare Extreme Time Pressure

The Miracle It works! Java didn't. Nor did a lot of other stuff.

The Scripted Browser Introduced in Netscape Navigator 2 (1995) Eclipsed by Java Applets Later Became the Frontline of the Browser War Dynamic HTML Document Object Model (DOM)

Proprietary Traps Netscape and LiveWire Microsoft and Internet Information Services Both server strategies frustrated by Apache Browser-dependent sites

Pax Microsoft In the years since the end of the Browser War, the number of browser variations in significant use fell off significantly. W3C attempts to unify. Mozilla abandoned the Netscape layer model in favor of the W3C model. The browser platform becomes somewhat stable. DHTML becomes known as Ajax.

The A List Firefox 1.5 Firefox 2.0 Safari 2 IE 6 IE 7 Opera 9 http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/gbs/gbs_browser-chart.html

document.write Allows JavaScript to produce HTML text. Before onload: Inserts HTML text into the document. After onload: Uses HTML text to replace the current document. Not recommended.

Collections document.anchors document.applets document.embeds document.forms document.frames document.images document.plugins document.scripts document.stylesheets Avoid these.

name v id name= Identifies values in form data Identifies a window/frame id= Uniquely identifies an element They used to be interchangeable.

document.all Microsoft feature, rejected by W3C and most other browsers. It acts as a function or array for accessing elements by position, name , or id . Avoid it.

Retrieving Nodes document.getElementById( id ) document.getElementsByName( name ) node .getElementsByTagName( tagName )

Document Tree Structure document document.body document. documentElement

Walk the DOM Using recursion, follow the firstChild node, and then the nextSibling nodes. function walkTheDOM( node , func ) { func ( node ); node = node . firstChild ; while ( node ) { walkTheDOM( node , func ); node = node . nextSibling ; } }

getElementsByClassName function getElementsByClassName(className) { var results = []; walkTheDOM (document.body, function (node) { var a, c = node.className, i; if (c) { a = c.split(' '); for (i = 0; i < a.length; i += 1) { if (a[i] === className) { results .push(node); break; } } } } ); return results; }

Manipulating Elements IMG has these properties: align 'none' , 'top' , 'left' , ... alt string border integer (pixels) height integer (pixels) hspace integer (pixels) id string isMap boolean src url useMap url vspace integer (pixels) width integer (pixels) node . property = expression ;

Manipulating Elements Old School if (my_image.complete) { my_image.src = superurl; } New School if (my_image.getAttribute('complete')) { my_image.setAttribute('src', superurl); }

Style node .className node .style. stylename node .currentStyle. stylename Only IE document.defaultView(). getComputedStyle( node , ""). getPropertyValue( stylename );

Style Names CSS background-color border-radius font-size list-style-type word-spacing z-index JavaScript backgroundColor borderRadius fontSize listStyleType wordSpacing zIndex

Making Elements document.createElement( tagName ) document.createTextNode( text ) node .cloneNode() Clone an individual element. node .cloneNode(true) Clone an element and all of its descendents. The new nodes are not connected to the document.

Linking Elements node .appendChild( new ) node .insertBefore( new , sibling ) node .replaceChild( new , old ) old.parentNode .replaceChild( new , old )

Removing Elements node .removeChild( old ) It returns the node. Be sure to remove any event handlers. old.parentNode .removeChild( old )

innerHTML The W3C standard does not provide access to the HTML parser. All A browsers implement Microsoft's innerHTML property.

Which Way Is Better? It is better to build or clone elements and append them to the document? Or is it better to compile an HTML text and use innerHTML to realize it? Favor clean code and easy maintenance. Favor performance only in extreme cases.

Events The browser has an event-driven, single-threaded, asynchronous programming model. Events are targeted to particular nodes. Events cause the invocation of event handler functions.

Mouse Events The target is the topmost (z-index) node containing the cursor. click dblclick mousedown mousemove mouseout mouseover mouseup

Input Events The target is the node having focus. blur change focus keydown keypress keyup reset submit

Event Handlers Classic node ["on" + type ] = f ; Microsoft node .attachEvent("on" + type , f ); W3C node .addEventListener( type , f , false);

Event Handlers The handler takes an optional event parameter. Microsoft does not send an event parameter, use the global event object instead.

Event Handlers function (e) { e = e || event; var target = e.target || e.srcElement; ... }

Trickling and Bubbling Trickling is an event capturing pattern which provides compatibility with the Netscape 4 model. Avoid it. Bubbling means that the event is given to the target, and then its parent, and then its parent, and so on until the event is canceled.

Why Bubble? Suppose you have 100 draggable objects. You could attach 100 sets of event handlers to those objects. Or you could attach one set of event handlers to the container of the 100 objects.

Cancel Bubbling Cancel bubbling to keep the parent nodes from seeing the event. e.cancelBubble = true; if (e.stopPropagation) { e.stopPropagation(); } Or you can use YUI's cancelBubble method.

Prevent Default Action An event handler can prevent a browser action associated with the event (such as submitting a form). e.returnValue = false; if (e.preventDefault) { e.preventDefault(); } return false; Or you can use YUI's preventDefault method.

Memory Leaks Memory management is automatic. It is possible to hang on to too much state, preventing it from being garbage collected.

Memory Leaks on IE 6 Explicitly remove all of your event handlers from nodes before you discard them. The IE6 DOM uses a reference counting garbage collector. Reference counting is not able to reclaim cyclical structures. You must break the cycles yourself.

Memory Leaks on IE 6 That was not an issue for page view-driven applications. It is a showstopper for Ajax applications. It will be fixed in IE7.

Memory Leaks on IE 6 Remove all event handlers from deleted DOM nodes. It must be done on nodes before removeChild or replaceChild . It must be done on nodes before they are replaced by changing innerHTML .

Breaking Links in the DOM function purgeEventHandlers( node ) { walkTheDOM ( node , function (e) { for (var n in e) { if (typeof e[n] === 'function') { e[n] = null; } } } ); } Or you can use YUI's purgeElement method.

JavaScript alert( text ) confirm( text ) prompt( text , default ) These functions break the asynchronous model. Avoid these in Ajax applications. setTimeout( func , msec ) setInterval( func , msec )

window The window object is also the JavaScript global object. Every window, frame, and iframe has its own unique window object. aka self . And sometimes parent and top .

Inter-window frames[] Child frames and iframes name Text name of window opener Reference to open parent Reference to parent self Reference to this window top Reference to outermost window Reference to this window open() Open new window

Inter-window A script can access another window if It can get a reference to it. document.domain === otherwindow.document.domain Same Origin Policy

Cross Browser Weak standards result in significant vendor-specific differences between browsers. Browser Detection. Feature Detection. Platform Libraries.

Browser Detection Determine what kind of browser that page is running in. Execute conditionally. The browsers lie. navigator.userAgent Mozilla/4.0 Brittle. Not recommended. http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/sniffer/browser_type.html

Feature Detection Using reflection, ask if desired features are present. Execute conditionally. function addEventHandler(node, type, f) { if (node.addEventListener) { node.addEventListener(type, f, false); } else if (node.attachEvent) { node.attachEvent("on" + type, f); } else { node["on" + type] = f; } }

Feature Detection Using reflection, ask if desired features are present. Execute conditionally. function addEventHandler(node, type, f) { node["on" + type] = f; } YAHOO.util.Event.addListener(node, type, f); Support for custom events, and for adding events to object that don't exist yet, and for purging event handlers from objects.

Use a Platform Library A platform library insulates the application from the poisonous browsers. YUI is highly recommended. http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/

The Cracks of DOM The DOM buglist includes all of the bugs in the browser. The DOM buglist includes all of the bugs in all supported browsers. No DOM completely implements the standards. Much of the DOM is not described in any standard.

Coping Do what works. Do what is common. Do what is standard.

The Wall Browsers are now being push to their limits. Be prepared to back off. Reduce your memory requirements. Balance of client and server.

The Hole The browser was not designed to be a general purpose application platform. Lacks a compositing model. Accessibility suffers. Lacks support for cooperation under mutual suspicion.

WWW War II Microsoft has awoken. They are beginning to innovate again. There are now 4 major browser makers. They will be flooding the web with bugs.

We Will Prevail We must use our clout to keep the browser makers in line. We must be players, not pawns. We must set the standards.

References The Document Object Model in Mozilla http://www.mozilla.org/docs/dom/ MSDN HTML and DHTML Reference http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/ reference/dhtml_reference_entry.asp Introduction to Safari JavaScript Programming Topics http://developer.apple.com/documentation/AppleApplications/Conceptual/SafariJSProgTopics/index.html Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core Specification http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Core/

The Theory Of The Dom

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The Theory Of The Dom