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In effect, the DOM is an [[Application Programming Interface|API]] for dynamically accessing, adding and changing structured content in documents with languages such as [[ECMAScript programming language|ECMAScript]] (Javascript).
The custodian of the DOM is the [[World Wide Web Consortium]] (W3C). However, [[Microsoft]] has notably added its own extension to the DOM, creating inter-operability problems for web browsers.
As Microsoft's [[Internet Explorer]] browser is, as of [[2002]], the de-facto standard web browser, this poses real problems for the developers of more standards-compliant browsers such as [[Mozilla]. If they adopt the Microsoft extensions to the DOM, they risk losing any credibility in their calls for web-sites to become standards-compliant, and if they do not, they risk alienating their users by losing much or all of the content of web-sites which use the non-standard extensions. Cynics regard this as another case of Microsoft applying [[embrace, extend and extinguish]] tactics, although both Microsoft and Netscape were guilty of supplying non-standard features in an arms-race for standards control.
The general consensus appears to be that this will only change if new standards-compliant browsers gain a significant market-share on the Web, thus making the use of non-standard extensions a commercial problem for the authors of non-standards-compliant websites.
Internet Explorer 7.0 is rumoured to be likely to be more standards-compliant in its implementation of the DOM, but is unlikely to pull support for the current proprietary DOM extensions. Time will tell.
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