The W3C Document Object Model (DOM) is a platform and language neutral interface that allow programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure, and style of a document."

The W3C DOM provides a standard set of objects for representing XML and HTML documents, and a standard interface for accessing and manipulating them.

The DOM is separated into different parts (XML,Core, and HTML) and also have different levels (DOM Level 1/2/3):

• Core DOM - defines a standard set of objects for any structured documents
• XML DOM - defines a standard set of objects for XML documents only.
• HTML DOM - defines a standard set of objects for HTML documents only

You can read more about the W3C DOM levels/specifications in our W3C tutorial

• The HTML DOM is the Document Object Model only for HTML
• The HTML DOM is language and platform independent
• The HTML DOM defines a standard set of objects for HTML, and a standard way to manipulate and access HTML documents
• The HTML DOM is W3C standard

The HTML DOM views HTML documents as a tree structure of elements which can be embedded within other elements. All elements,their attributes and their containing text, can be accessed through the DOM tree. Their contents can be deleted or modified, and new elements can be created by the DOM. The elements,their attributes , and their text are all known as nodes.

The HTML DOM is language and platform independent. It can be used by any programming language likeJavaScript, Java and VBScript.

In this tutorial we will also use JavaScript

This coding example shows how the background color of an HTML document can be changed to yellow when a user click on it: