Glossary

Editors:

Arnaud Le Hors, W3C

Robert S. Sutor, IBM Research (for DOM Level 1)

Some of the following term definitions have been borrowed or modified from similar definitions in other W3C or standards documents. See the links within the definitions for more information.

bubbling phase

The process by which an event can be handled by one of the target ancestors after being handled by the target node.

capture phase

The process by which an event can be handled by one of the target ancestors before being handled by the target node.

child

A child is an immediate descendant node of a node.

DOM Level 0

The term "DOM Level 0" refers to a mix (not formally specified) of HTML document functionalities offered by Netscape Navigator version 3.0 and Microsoft Internet Explorer version 3.0. In some cases, attributes or methods have been included for reasons of backward compatibility with "DOM Level 0".

event

An event is the representation of some asynchronous occurrence (such as a mouse click on the presentation of the element, or the removal of child node from an element, or any of unthinkably many other possibilities) that gets associated with an event target.

event target

The object to which an event is targeted.

local name

See local name in [XML Namespaces 1.1].

namespace URI

A namespace URI is a URI that identifies an XML namespace. This is called the namespace name in [XML Namespaces 1.1]. See also sections 1.3.2 "DOM URIs" and 1.3.3 "XML Namespaces" regarding URIs and namespace URIs handling and comparison in the DOM APIs.

target node

The target node is the node representing the event target to which an event is targeted using the DOM event flow.

target phase

The process by which an event can be handled by the event target.