The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the Document Object Model Level 2 specification as a W3C Recommendation. The specification reflects cross-industry agreement on a standard API for manipulating documents and data through a programming language (such as Java or ECMAScript). Created and developed by the W3C Document Object Model (DOM) Working Group, this specification extends the platform- and language-neutral interface to access and update dynamically a document’s content, structure, and style first described by the DOM Level 1 Recommendation. The DOM Level 2 provides a standard set of objects for representing XML documents and data, including namespace support, a style sheet platform which adds support for CSS 1 and 2, a standard model of how these objects may be combined, and a standard interface for accessing and manipulating them. DOM Level 1 was designed for HTML 4.0 and XML 1.0. With DOM Level 2, authors can take further advantage of the extensibility of XML. Simply put, anywhere you use XML you can now use the DOM to manipulate it. The standard DOM interface makes it possible to write software for processing customized tag-sets in a language- and platform-independent way. DOM Level 2 provides support for XML namespaces, extending and improving the XML platform. The DOM provides a uniform way to produce programs that work across a variety of different devices, so all may benefit from dynamically generated content. The DOM Level 2 Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) API makes it possible for a script author to access and manipulate style information associated with contents, while preserving accessibility. DOM Level 2 also includes an Events API to provide interactivity anywhere someone uses XML – in documents, in data, or in B2B applications. Other W3C Working Groups are currently at work in extending further the DOM Level 2 platform for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and Mathematical Markup Language (MathML). The DOM Working Group is currently at work developing DOM Level 3, the next layer of functionality for DOM. www.w3c.org