A Final Word

In this column we showed you two causes for mismatches between an HTML document and its DOM representation. The first cause is an illegal HTML constructs. We picked positioning a list element within a paragraph element as an example for such a construct. The other cause is a bug in Internet Explorer's implementation of the DOM. We explained in detail these two cases and we sketched the original HTML's DOMs as well as the actual DOMs. We explained how the browser automatically corrects illegal HTML documents. We also showed how to workaroud the bug. We presented four new DOM sketches that should further contribute to your understanding of the DOM structure and its synthesis from a document. In this column you learned:

• How to recognize the <FONT> bug..
• How to draw the correct object structure of a <FONT>-tainted document.
• How to draw the buggy object structure of a <FONT>-tainted document.
• How to recognize an illegal HTML construct.
• How to draw the object structure of an illegal HTML page.
• How to draw the object structure of the corrected HTML document.