http://www.w3schools.com/dom/dom_intro.asp
The DOM is a W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standard.
The DOM defines a standard for accessing documents like XML and HTML:
"The W3C Document Object Model (DOM) is a platform and language-neutral interface that allows programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure, and style of a document."
The DOM is separated into 3 different parts / levels:
- Core DOM - standard model for any structured document
- XML DOM - standard model for XML documents
- HTML DOM - standard model for HTML documents
The DOM defines the objects and properties of all document elements, and the methods (interface) to access them.
我的理解:DOM是将文档(HTML,XML等)内容解析成对象的标准。在browser中由layout engine实现HTML DOM,将HTML elements解析成脚本语言(例如javascript)可访问的对象,脚本可以对DOM对象进行修改从而产生动态网页效果(例如igoogle中操作各种gadgets)。