Represents the HTML document in a specific browser window.

Members Table

The following table lists the members exposed by the document object.

Attributes/Properties

Attribute	Property	Description
	activeElement	Gets the object that has the focus when the parent document has focus.
	alinkColor	Sets or gets the color of all active links in the document.
	bgColor	Deprecated. Sets or retrieves a value that indicates the background color behind the object.
CHARSET	charset	Sets or retrieves the character set used to encode the object.
	compatible	Retrieves the collection of user agents and versions declared in the X-UA-Compatible
	compatMode	Gets a value that indicates whether standards-compliant mode is switched on for the object.
	constructor	Returns a references to the constructor of an object.
	cookie	Sets or gets the string value of a cookie.
	defaultCharset	Gets the default character set from the current regional language settings.
	designMode	Sets or gets a value that indicates whether the document can be edited.
	dir	Sets or retrieves a value that indicates the reading order of the object.
	doctype	Gets the document type declaration associated with the current document.
	documentElement	Gets a reference to the root node of the document.
	documentMode	Retrieves the document compatibility mode of the document.
	domain	Sets or gets the security domain of the document.
	expando	Sets or retrieves a value indicating whether arbitrary variables can be created within the object.
	fgColor	Sets or gets the foreground (text) color of the document.
	fileCreatedDate	Retrieves the date the file was created.
	fileModifiedDate	Retrieves the date the file was last modified.
	fileSize	Retrieves the file size.
	implementation	Gets the implementation object of the current document.
	lastModified	Gets the date that the page was last modified, if the page supplies one.
	linkColor	Sets or gets the color of the document links.
	parentWindow	Gets a reference to the container object of the window.
	protocol	Sets or retrieves the protocol portion of a URL.
	readyState	Retrieves a value that indicates the current state of the object.
	referrer	Gets the URL of the location that referred the user to the current page.
	uniqueID	Retrieves an autogenerated, unique identifier for the object.
	URL	Sets or gets the URL for the current document.
	URLUnencoded	Gets the URL for the document, stripped of any character encoding.
	vlinkColor	Sets or gets the color of the links that the user has visited.
	XSLDocument	Retrieves a reference to the top-level node of the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) document.

Collections

Collection	Description
all	Returns a reference to the collection of elements contained by the object.
anchors	Retrieves a collection of all a objects that have a name and/or id property. Objects in this collection are in HTML source order.
applets	Retrieves a collection of all applet objects in the document.
childNodes	Retrieves a collection of HTML Elements and TextNode objects that are direct descendants of the specified object.
embeds	Retrieves a collection of all embed objects in the document.
forms	Retrieves a collection, in source order, of all form objects in the document.
frames	Retrieves a collection of all window objects defined by the given document or defined by the document associated with the given window.
images	Retrieves a collection, in source order, of img objects in the document.
links	Retrieves a collection of all a objects that specify the href property and all area objects in the document.
namespaces	Retrieves a collection of namespace objects.
scripts	Retrieves a collection of all script objects in the document.
styleSheets	Retrieves a collection of styleSheet objects representing the style sheets that correspond to each instance of a link or style object in the document.

Events

Event	Description
onactivate	Fires when the object is set as the active element.
onbeforeactivate	Fires immediately before the object is set as the active element.
onbeforedeactivate	Fires immediately before the activeElement is changed from the current object to another object in the parent document.
onbeforeeditfocus	Fires before an object contained in an editable element enters a UI-activated state or when an editable container object is control selected.
oncellchange	Fires when data changes in the data provider.
onclick	Fires when the user clicks the left mouse button on the object.
oncontextmenu	Fires when the user clicks the right mouse button in the client area, opening the context menu.
oncontrolselect	Fires when the user is about to make a control selection of the object.
ondataavailable	Fires periodically as data arrives from data source objects that asynchronously transmit their data.
ondatasetchanged	Fires when the data set exposed by a data source object changes.
ondatasetcomplete	Fires to indicate that all data is available from the data source object.
ondblclick	Fires when the user double-clicks the object.
ondeactivate	Fires when the activeElement is changed from the current object to another object in the parent document.
ondragstart	Fires on the source object when the user starts to drag a text selection or selected object.
onerrorupdate	Fires on a databound object when an error occurs while updating the associated data in the data source object.
onfocusin	Fires for an element just prior to setting focus on that element.
onfocusout	Fires for the current element with focus immediately after moving focus to another element.
onhelp	Fires when the user presses the F1 key while the browser is the active window.
onkeydown	Fires when the user presses a key.
onkeypress	Fires when the user presses an alphanumeric key.
onkeyup	Fires when the user releases a key.
onmousedown	Fires when the user clicks the object with either mouse button.
onmousemove	Fires when the user moves the mouse over the object.
onmouseout	Fires when the user moves the mouse pointer outside the boundaries of the object.
onmouseover	Fires when the user moves the mouse pointer into the object.
onmouseup	Fires when the user releases a mouse button while the mouse is over the object.
onmousewheel	Fires when the wheel button is rotated.
onpropertychange	Fires when a property changes on the object.
onreadystatechange	Fires when the state of the object has changed.
onrowenter	Fires to indicate that the current row has changed in the data source and new data values are available on the object.
onrowexit	Fires just before the data source control changes the current row in the object.
onrowsdelete	Fires when rows are about to be deleted from the recordset.
onrowsinserted	Fires just after new rows are inserted in the current recordset.
onselectionchange	Fires when the selection state of a document changes.
onstop	Fires when the user clicks the Stop button or leaves the Web page.
onstorage	Fires when a DOM Storage area is updated.
onstoragecommit	Fires when a local DOM Storage area is written to disk.

Methods

Method	Description
attachEvent	Binds the specified function to an event, so that the function gets called whenever the event fires on the object.
clear	Not currently supported.
close	Closes an output stream and forces the sent data to display.
createAttribute	Creates an attribute object with a specified name.
createComment	Creates a comment object with the specified data.
createDocumentFragment	Creates a new document.
createElement	Creates an instance of the element for the specified tag.
createEventObject	Generates an event object to pass event context information when you use the fireEvent method.
createStyleSheet	Creates a style sheet for the document.
createTextNode	Creates a text string from the specified value.
detachEvent	Unbinds the specified function from the event, so that the function stops receiving notifications when the event fires.
elementFromPoint	Returns the element for the specified x coordinate and the specified y coordinate.
execCommand	Executes a command on the current document, current selection, or the given range.
execCommandShowHelp	Displays help information for the given command identifier.
focus	Causes the element to receive the focus and executes the code specified by the onfocus event.
getElementById	Returns a reference to the first object with the specified value of the ID or NAME attribute.
getElementsByName	Gets a collection of objects based on the value of the NAME or ID attribute.
getElementsByTagName	Retrieves a collection of objects based on the specified element name.
hasFocus	Gets a value indicating whether the object currently has focus.
open	Opens a new window and loads a document specified by a given URL. Also, opens a new window that uses the url parameter and the name parameter to collect the output of the write method and the writeln method.
queryCommandEnabled	Returns a Boolean value that indicates whether a specified command can be successfully executed using execCommand, given the current state of the document.
queryCommandIndeterm	Returns a Boolean value that indicates whether the specified command is in the indeterminate state.
queryCommandState	Returns a Boolean value that indicates the current state of the command.
queryCommandSupported	Returns a Boolean value that indicates whether the current command is supported on the current range.
queryCommandText	Retrieves the string associated with a command.
queryCommandValue	Returns the current value of the document, range, or current selection for the given command.
querySelector	Retrieves the first Document Object Model (DOM) element node from descendants of the starting element node that match any selector within the supplied selector string.
querySelectorAll	Retrieves all DOM element nodes from descendants of the starting element node that match any selector within the supplied selector strings.
recalc	Recalculates all dynamic properties in the current document.
releaseCapture	Removes mouse capture from the object in the current document.
updateSettings	Allows updating the print settings for the page.
write	Writes one or more HTML expressions to a document in the specified window.
writeln	Writes one or more HTML expressions, followed by a carriage return, to a document in the specified window.

Objects

Element	Object	Description
BODY	body	Specifies the beginning and end of the document body.
	implementation	Contains information about the modules supported by the object.
	location	Contains information about the current URL.
	selection	Represents the active selection, which is a highlighted block of text or other elements in the document that a user or a script can carry out some action on.
TITLE	title	Contains the title of the document.

Prototypes

Object	Description
HTMLCollection Constructor	Defines the properties and methods inherited by objects in the HTMLCollection Constructor prototype chain.
HTMLDocument Constructor	Defines the properties and methods inherited by objects in the HTMLDocument Constructor prototype chain.

Remarks

Use the document object to examine, modify, or add content to an HTML document and to process events within that document. In a Web page, the document object can be referenced through the document property of the window object or it can be referenced directly.

The document object is available at all times in the primary document, but it does not exist for the HTML Component (HTC) files used in lightweight Dynamic HTML (DHTML) behaviors. This is because lightweight behaviors can be defined only if they do not use a document object in the HTC file. As a result, lightweight behaviors run faster and more efficiently than normal behaviors. Lightweight DHTML behaviors can, however, access the document object of the primary document in the same way as normal DHTML behaviors.

The ondocumentready event notifies DHTML behaviors that the document object is available from the primary Web page containing the behavior. Afterondocumentready has fired, a behavior can begin to manipulate the primary document object.

It is possible for the script in a behavior to reference the document object in the HTC file or the primary document. When coding script in an HTC file, use element.document to refer to the document object in the primary document.

Examples

This example uses the document object to check for a document title and displays the title (if not null) in a message box.

if (document.title!="")
    alert("The title is " + document.title)

This example shows an event handler function that displays the current position of the mouse, relative to the upper-left corner of the document, in the browser's status window.

<HTML>
<HEAD><TITLE>Report mouse moves</TITLE>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JScript">
function reportMove()
{
    window.status = "X=" + window.event.x + " Y=" + window.event.y;
}
</SCRIPT>
<BODY onmousemove="reportMove()">
<H1>Welcome!</H1>
</BODY>
</HTML>

Standards Information

This object is defined in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 .

Applies To

CUSTOM, window