Book Review: The Document Object Model

Although I have this book by Joe Marini listed among my favorites, I never wrote a review for it. Just recently I read it again to brush up on the minute details of working with Document Object Model (DOM) and figured it deserved some praise.

First off, this is not a book on mastering JavaScript. It is rather a thorough overview of the DOM and ways to navigate and manipulate it. Since the language of the client-side speak is JavaScript, all web samples are presented in—you guessed it right—JavaScript.

The book has an extensive coverage of the "ideal world" DOM, i.e. as defined by W3C, as well as DOM in the real world with the many imperfections of how it’s been implemented by browser manufacturers.

If you develop for the web, you can skip Chapter 6, Applications, which discusses standalone DOM implementations, Apache Xerces Parser, Microsoft’s MXSML, and the like.

I really enjoyed the closing chapters with detailed samples of how to manipulate DOM with JavaScript and build bookmarks, a color picker, a pop-up menu, etc.

Interestingly enough, when the book was published, Joe worked for Panscopic Corp. It appears Microsoft hired him at some point (which is a good thing, in case I’m not sending the right vibe).