Which document DOM?

It is important to distinguish between the DOM of the user's document and the DOM of the extension. The information in this chapter applies to both types of Dreamweaver documents, but the way that you reference each DOM is different.

If you are familiar with JavaScript in browsers, you can reference objects in the active document by writing document. (for example, document.forms[0]), the same way that you reference objects in extension files. To reference objects in the user's document, however, you must call dw.getDocumentDOM(), dw.createDocument(), or another function that returns a user document object.

For example, to refer to the first image in the active document, you can write dw.getDocumentDOM().images[0]. You can also store the document object in a variable and use that variable in future references, as shown in the following example:

 var dom = dw.getDocumentDOM(); //get the dom of the current document var firstImg = dom.images[0]; firstImg.src = "myImages.gif"; 

This kind of notation is common in files throughout the Configuration folder, especially in command files. For more information about the dw.getDocumentDOM() method, see the dreamweaver.getDocumentDOM() function in the Dreamweaver API Reference.