Comparison of layout engines (Document Object Model)

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The following tables compare DOM compatibility and support for a number of layout engines. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up-to-date. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs.

For features that are fully supported (based on DOM Level 2 or DOM Level 3 modules that are under W3C Recommendation), an exact version number is given if it is certain that the feature was added in such version. DOM Level 0 and DOM Level 3 modules that are still under development are not included.

[edit] Explanation of the tables

[edit] Engine nomenclature

Rather than the names of web browsers, the names of the underlying engines are used. The browsers that use the various engines are listed below.

[edit] Values

Values indicate the level of support in the most recent version of the layout engine, or (if a version number is given) in the specified version. Version numbers without any other value indicate the version at which the layout engine first fully supported the feature.

[edit] General overview

[edit] Core (Fundamental)

The interfaces within this section are considered fundamental, and must be fully implemented by all conforming implementations of the DOM, including all HTML DOM implementations.

[edit] Trident Core (Fundamental) notes

1. docType returns true when checked but always contains null.
2. getElementById() — returns elements with name attribute set to value being found, not only id. Present in IE7. [1]
3. getAttribute(), setAttribute(), removeAttribute() — returns, sets, and removes, respectively, the corresponding DOM property instead of the string value of the attribute. For example, element.getAttribute('onclick') returns element.onclick, which is a reference to a function and not a string. Another example: element.removeAttribute('class') does not work as expected; element.removeAttribute('className') must be called instead. getAttribute and setAttribute with 'style' as their parameter don't work, but the inline style can be retrieved by setting the non-standard iFlags parameter to 2 (i.e. by calling element.getAttribute('style',2)), or accessed using the Node.style property. [2]
4. AttributeNode.specified — Does not set specified to true if ownerElement should be null.
5. Node.isSameNode — isSameNode is only supported for XML documents, not HTML ones.

[edit] Tasman Core (Fundamental) notes

1. AttributeNode.specified — Does not set specified to true if ownerElement should be null.

[edit] Gecko Core (Fundamental) notes

1. insertBefore(), replaceChild(), removeChild(), appendChild() — Fails on Attr nodes [3]. appendChild does not work as expected for DocumentFragment nodes prior to 1.8 [4].
2. createEntityReference() — Supported, but returns null when the method is checked [5].
3. AttributeNode.specified — Does not set specified to true if ownerElement is null [6]. As it also does not create Attribute Nodes for default values specified in the DTD, it renders this property absolutely useless.
4. wholeText, replaceWholeText() — See Bug 421765 on Bugzilla

[edit] Presto Core (Fundamental) notes

1. getElementById() — Versions prior to Opera 9.50 returns elements with name attribute set to value being found, not only id [7].
2. URI attribute value — In versions prior to Opera 9, all URI attribute values are resolved to full URI. Hence the value from getAttribute() and getAttributeNode() could be wrong if relative URIs are used.
3. Attributes that are not supported in the layout engine are still parsed and available through DOM. E.g. char and charoff are available under .ch and .chOff.
4. In Opera 8.54 methods DOMImplementation.createDocument and DOMDocument.createElementNS both fail to accept any non-empty namespace URI. They work in Opera 9 Beta 2 and they may also have worked before (somebody with Opera 8, please check.) The symptom is that the namespaceURI property is null/empty and serialization gives wrong result.

[edit] Core (Extended)

The interfaces defined here form part of the DOM Core specification, but objects that expose these interfaces will never be encountered in a DOM implementation that deals only with HTML.

[edit] HTML

The interfaces found within this section are not mandatory. This section extends the DOM Core API to describe objects and methods specific to HTML documents, and XHTML documents. In general, the functionality needed to manipulate hierarchical document structures, elements, and attributes will be found in the core section; functionality that depends on the specific elements defined in HTML will be found in this section. Elements deprecated since HTML 4.01 are not listed. Some elements and attributes listed here are deprecated in XHTML 1.1. For example, presentation attributes, image maps, frames and targets.