Unfortunately, all you have is a new standard.

The DOM makes all of the structures and parts of a Web page available to any application that knows how to talk to a browser (well, to a new browser that implements the DOM, such as MSIE 5 and Netscape 5).

What is a document object model? It's a representation of the structure of a document. At its simplest, a document is a list of parts: a title, subtitle, paragraph, etc. But just about every document with which we deal in real life is not a simple sequence of bits but a hierarchy of nested bits.

For example, this sentence not only follows the preceding one, but is also part of an article called "DOM Perignon" which is part of an online publication which is part of a family of online publications. And, of course, documents can easily be far more complex than that. The DOM captures the structure of any XML document.

The main aim of the DOM is to enable computer applications to find everything on a page. An application needs to be able to walk through a document and identify every element so that the app can decide whether it is supposed to operate on that piece. For example, an application might want to find every hyperlink in a document in order to redirect them depending on whether the user has pressed a button marked "Beginner" or one marked "Expert." Alternatively, an application might need to find every item in a list that carries the XML tag <Tool_List>.

A standard DOM makes this type of thing a snap (so long as you can rub your stomach and pat your head while reallocating memory arrays in C). The article "Introducing the Browser Object Model" gives additional background on the object model built into v4 browsers.

Therefore, it is very good news that the two squabbling brats of the Web have agreed, pretty much, on a common DOM specification because otherwise the Java application that worked with one browser would crap out in the other. As things stand it's pretty remarkable that pages work roughly the same in both browsers. (Ok, fine, send me your examples of pages that only work in one browser .... TBTF -- one of my favorite 'zines -- maintains a current list of 'em [talk about your fun hobbies!]).

All hail, DOM!