December 2010
Beginner
455 pages
9h 37m
English
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Chapter 13. The Document Object Model
In conventional applications, the operating system provides user interface elements and behaviors that enable developers to provide a rich experience for the user. Developing such applications is convenient, as the entire application is typically written in one language. The developer needs to know only one language to write code to interface with a data store (such as a database), code to process that data, code to display that data to the user, and code to interact with the user.
Web developers don't have it that easy. The data store interaction and processing are written in one language (like PHP, Python, or C#), and the user interface is typically a combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. HTML is used for basic output/input for the user, which is a rather static and boring experience. CSS can spice up the application a little, but it isn't designed to do much more than determine how the browser renders the elements. So, to create a rich interactive experience, developers must turn to JavaScript.
But JavaScript is only part of the equation. There has to be an interface that enables a JavaScript developer to interact with a web page while it's loaded in the browser; such an interface exists, and it's called the Document Object Model (DOM).
WHAT IS THE DOM?
The DOM is a browser-independent Application Programming Interface (API) — a set of objects, properties, and methods that defines how HTML documents are structured, accessed, and manipulated ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.