Question

I am beginner into HTML & HTML5.
As I was reading through the following link, i found the terms DOM and DOM API. I read through the Wikipedia, but was not able to digest the whole idea behind it.

Could somebody explain me :

• the real idea behind the concept of Document Object Model (DOM)?
• how is it related to HTML5?

Thanks,
Sen

Answer 1

From Wikipedia:

The Document Object Model (DOM) is a
cross-platform and
language-independent convention for
representing and interacting with
objects in HTML, XHTML and XML
documents

Simply put, it’s how browsers (amongst other clients) represent web documents. The DOM is not specific to HTML5. It’s been there from the get-go.

DOM API basically means how you, as a programmer, can interact with the DOM. Some examples might be adding elements to the DOM, changing their styles, and other common operations you would do on a web document.

In the context of HTML5, there are several additions to the DOM that didn’t exist in previous versions of the HTML spec, such as <video> and <audio> elements.