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ince the invention of own way of implementing those
the World Wide Web features, but still relying on the
by Tim Berners-Lee in basic building blocks that are
1989, the browser has HTML, JavaScript and CSS.
evolved quite dramatically and it These complex components are
is now capable of running Web usually the ones that make the
applications using a technology tester worry, as the automation
that initially was not meant tool is often unable to correctly
for that purpose. The HTML1 handle them. The automated
language was created for enabling testing tool will usually fail to
researchers to collaborate and understand the essence of the
share information. component and will instead
record low-level interactions such
Web applications have now as clicks here and clicks there.
become so complex and are Not surprisingly though, as these
using a mixture of HTML/XML, components are formed using
JavaScript and CSS2. Web basic building blocks. So, how do
developers need to spend a fair we overcome this challenge?
amount of time learning this Before answering this question,
technology and all the derivatives let’s have a look at the
(jQuery, Ajax, REST to name a architecture of a Web browser.
few) that enable them to develop Figure 1 shows the components
even more powerful applications. of a typical Browser architecture.
www.macrotesting.com 21
November 2009 Technical Corner - Document Object Model (DOM)
A typical flow
consists of the
following steps:
1. A user types a URL which
triggers the download of a
main HTML page and all the
related resources.
22 www.macrotesting.com
Technical Corner - Document Object Model (DOM) November 2009
www.macrotesting.com 23