World Wide Web Consortium Issues First Public Draft of Document Object Model — DOM

Business Wire, Oct 9, 1997

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 9, 1997--

Industry Leaders Collaborate to Develop Core Functionality for

Document Navigation and Content Manipulation

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today issued the first Working Draft of its Document Object Model (DOM) specification, Core Level 1, addressing core functionality for document navigation and content manipulation.

"The collaboration on the DOM reinforces the strength of the W3C process," said Arnaud Le Hors, W3C DOM activity leader. "The W3C DOM Working Group is developing a platform- and language-neutral program interface that will allow programs and scripts to access every element in a document and update the content and structure of documents in a standard way."

Key industry players are participating in the DOM Working Group, including ArborText, Grif, IBM, Inso, Microsoft, Netscape, Novell, the Object Management Group, SoftQuad and Sun Microsystems.

The Document Object Model could be the most significant interoperability standard to ever come out of the W3C," said Gavin Nicol, Systems Architect at Inso Corp. and contributor to the DOM working group. "The DOM API will 'level the playing field' for vendors developing document manipulation applications. With the DOM, Web authors, script writers and application developers will be able to write programs once and have them run equally well in all DOM-compliant implementations. In addition to supporting important emerging standards such as XML, XSL and XLL, Inso is committed to supporting DOM in future versions of products such as DynaText and DynaBase."

"DOM Level 1 provides the framework for truly dynamic documents on the Web. We are pleased to contribute to this work," said David Singer, senior technical staff member, IBM.

Interoperability = Author Empowerment

Current software implementations which allow dynamic access and updates of content, structure and style lack a standard interface -- resulting in authors' inability to use the programs in an interoperable manner. The W3C is tackling this problem with the DOM; its foundation being Level 1.

"This first draft of Level 1 goes a long way toward promoting the interoperability of the Web," said Lauren Wood, DOM Working Group chair and technical project manager of SoftQuad Inc. "It provides a general framework to which we will be adding in the specifications to come, and is flexible enough to be used for many different applications and by many different people."

"The DOM Working Draft lays the groundwork for interoperability," said David Cole, vice president of the Internet client and collaboration division at Microsoft. "Microsoft is committed to continuing its leading support of the W3C DOM in Microsoft Internet Explorer."

"Netscape believes this first working draft represents a significant advancement that will provide developers with a standard way to create dynamic content," said Dave Rothschild, director of client product marketing at Netscape. "A standard implementation of the DOM -- in conjunction with Java and JavaScript -- will allow developers to produce platform-independent application interfaces that lay the foundation for a next-generation of crossware applications."

"The possibilities offered by the Document Object Model API are practically unlimited, and essential to the efficient diffusion and processing of information throughout any organization. Grif intends to incorporate the DOM API into its existing Global Application Toolkit Environment to enable the same kinds of enriched document creation and management applications on intranets that are used today in our customers' industrial-strength publishing systems," said Murray Maloney, technical marketing director, Grif S.A.

Tim Bray, invited expert on the DOM Interest Group and co-editor of the W3C XML specification, said, "This DOM draft is a great beginning. It includes everything you need for serious client-side XML processing, starting now. With the DOM, Java, ECMAscript and XML, the pieces are finally falling into place so we can bring the Web alive."

"ArborText is continually seeking ways for our customers to improve their levels of reuse, and supporting the DOM will enable them to reuse the same code for both content creation and content delivery," said Paul Grosso, ArborText's vice president of research and advisory committee representative to the W3C.

"Script authors will probably use more of the functions in the HTML and XML specifications, which the DOM Working Group is currently designing," continued Wood. "We plan to have more to say on that front soon."

The Core Level 1 DOM Working Draft is expected to be followed by HTML and XML Level 1 specifications in the near term. After the release of these specifications, the Working Group will work on formulating other Levels of the DOM that specify a standard event model, style sheet model and a more sophisticated security model.

For more information on the DOM, please see http://www.w3.org/DOM/

About the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)