Exploit the Document Object Model to create enhanced Web applications

Move your Web applications beyond the handicap of the ubiquitous thin client architecture. Today's browsers finally support advanced client-side interactions across all objects in an HTML document. Thanks to the Document Object Model (DOM), UI designers can now create interfaces that let users manipulate data in real time while still offering the conveniences of a Web application. Author Mike Padilla shows you how to implement code that exposes robust client-side functionality that is both clean and extensible.

As the browser wars come to a close, user interface (UI) designers and developers are left with a fairly fixed, robust platform on which to create better Web applications. The latest browsers afford you two things: more control over how the UI behaves on the client side (both visually and interactively) as well as cleaner, more extensible ways to implement it.

Yes, developers can start to have their cake and eat it too, as the chains of the standard Web application -- a thin client working in conjunction with a server -- continue to break. Today you can create applications with rich interactive functionality that are easily deployed and upgraded on the Web. This is a result of the development, acceptance, and adherence to standards regarding the Document Object Model (DOM). UI designers and developers can leverage the DOM's accessibility and manipulability through JavaScript and cascading style sheets (CSS) to create systems that users can manage more efficiently.