An Introduction to the W3C DOMThursday June 17th, 1999Mitch Gould has brought to our attention an article he did for WebReview entitled "The DOM in Version 5 Browsers". I'll let Mitch give you the lowdown: "...a clear, concise introduction to cross-browser DHTML using the W3C DOM, complete with a working example that creates, modifies, and destroys a table. This example also illustrates the model/view/controller design pattern for user interfaces built with the DOM. BONUS: get the animated 'gryphon' W3C DOM badge to embed in your pages that use the DOM API." I heared some tumore that DSSL is available in mozilla 5. Where to get it ? Is it stable ? Our firm need such a feature (and we would PAY for it !!!) Interesting thing at the end of the article: This article is adapted from his book-in-progress, Human Factors Programming using the DOM, a guide to innovative user interfaces for the Mozilla browser. dssl in mozilla? I never heard that. A integrated DSSL engine within Mozilla would be a great step forward. Think about publishers or big firms which use DSSL for their documents. If Mozilla 5 implements DSSL, there would be no need anymore for the MS-XSL. Think about it. ANd then tell me there in the source tree the DSSL engine sits, and how to enable it !! Last but not least mozillaZine should file an article about this great step in mozilla's history... what is DSSL ???? I heard Doczilla, http://www.doczilla.com may have the infrastructure to do DSSL. "DSSSL is a document tree transformation and style language in with many adherents in the SGML community." -- http://www.w3.org/Style/#dsssl I apologize for being off-topic, but as this discussion has already been hijacked re: DSSSL here is an answer from Bugzilla -- http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8463 -- Now, perhaps this can be the last off-topic post? http://buzz.builder.com/cgi-bin/WebX?11@@.ee77902 Does IE5 really support this stuff? I think that Anon meant: http://buzz.builder.com/cgi-bin/WebX?14@@.ee77902 ...since it's about Mozilla. I might want to remind the people who read the above article that IE5 has holes in its W3C's implementation of DOM the size how much water covers the earth. It is also true that Gecko has many holes in its implementation at this time, but its also not yet even in Alpha, where IE5 is a released version of their 5.0 browser. "I might want to remind the people who read the above article that IE5 has holes in its W3C's implementation of DOM the size how much water covers the earth." Mozilla and I have been trading e-mails on this subject, and Eric quoted an early Web Standards .Org analysis criticizing Microsoft's DOM implementation while praising the game plans at Mozilla. I agree this is quite significant. My gripes were borne of several rank-novice experiences in hacking DOM and other DHTML approaches in Mozilla, where I found MSIE5, once I began to try it, was far more prone than Gecko to support the published DOM and DHTML APIs. (For one instance among many, as near as I can recall, I was trying to modify OPTIONS in a SELECT object... Not necessarily a DOM thing. I could go on for pages...) What's the real situation? I'd be glad to set the record straight IF Web Review will be so gracious as to allow me to make further changes to the article. We've been through an unusually arduous spate of version-control problems during the editing, so I can't promise a dang thing on THEIR behalf... Wiser heads than I, I'd like to get your guidance. You can get me at humanfact@generalpicture.com. Ciao Mitch "I might want to remind the people who read the above article that IE5 has holes in its W3C's implementation of DOM the size how much water covers the earth." Mozilla and I have been trading e-mails on this subject, and Eric quoted an early Web Standards .Org analysis criticizing Microsoft's DOM implementation while praising the game plans at Mozilla. I agree this is quite significant. My gripes were borne of several rank-novice experiences in hacking DOM and other DHTML approaches in Mozilla, where I found MSIE5, once I began to try it, was far more prone than Gecko to support the published DOM and DHTML APIs. (For one instance among many, as near as I can recall, I was trying to modify OPTIONS in a SELECT object... Not necessarily a DOM thing. I could go on for pages...) What's the real situation? I'd be glad to set the record straight IF Web Review will be so gracious as to allow me to make further changes to the article. We've been through an unusually arduous spate of version-control problems during the editing, so I can't promise a dang thing on THEIR behalf... Wiser heads than I, I'd like to get your guidance. You can get me at humanfact@generalpicture.com. Ciao Mitch don't forget to submit DOM bugs through bugzilla... people forging posts? what lamers were doing that? I really dislike this article because it makes the mistake of associating the DOM with DHTML when, in fact, the DOM replaces DHTML with something much better. In particular the DOM has a "Core" which handles both XML and HTML with a tiny number of operations, as opposed to the bloated DOM HTML part which was created for compatibility with old, bad DHTML. In fact, the author never mentions XML, a horrible omission, a disservice to his readers, IMHO. It isn't DSSL, it is "DSSSL", Document Style and Semantic Specification Language (pronounced DISS-EL) and there is very little chance that it will get included in mozilla, if for no other reason than the people who created it are now creating XSL and this had been partially implemented in IE5. There has been a big debate about whether or not we need XSL which was discussed earlier in MozillaZine. DSSSL was designed for SGML transformation (typical SGML to other SGML, to HTML, or to RTF, PostScript, etc.) so there is some sense to say that the SGML-capable mozilla browser DocZilla has some of the elements needed to support DSSSL. A superficial integration of DSSSL would be rather easy but it is also difficult to see the point of that. Anyway, the DocZilla team is not working on that. There is one company that does have DSSSL running as an ActiveX component in IE and has been talking about implementing it for Netscape. I don't have a reference offhand. Posts to MozillaZine from me have been forged in the past (apparently by some immature person hostile to the position I took in the XSL debate). I therefore will only post here under the MozillaZine member account mle. Michael Leventhal DocZilla team I should a clarification - the author does discuss XML in another section of his article and gives an adequate explanation of what the DOM is. My complaint is that you don't these basics until you dig down in the article and I believe most readers will come away from a quick reading rather misinformed about the relationship between the DOM and DHTML. I do understand that the author has tried to approach the material from familiar ground, so please take my criticism with a grain of salt. On the other hand, I believe the assessment of Gecko vs IE is colored in large measure by the DHTML emphasis. I personally have found core DOM, dynamic programming done in the browser in what I consider the clean way, to be much better in Gecko although admittedly I know my way around the bugs. I do think IE is relatively speaking a mess while Gecko will be good when it is done. I share the author's concern that they _both_ get it right and hopefully eventually they will. Michael Leventhal Doczilla Team |