In one of my recent posts, I brought up the subject of using XML files as opposed to databases. When we released the referenced application to the public and began using it, I encountered a strange problem that took me the better part of the morning to solve.

After the first new news release was posted, which included an amazing amount of text and HTML code (the meat of the news release was two extremely long lists - broken into four-column tables - of award recipients). Once the release was posted, the script that accessed the XML files began timing out every time I tried to access the page. Of course, because the news release was posted almost immediately after making the page live, I had no idea what was actually causing the timeouts.

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This is the final installment of my four-part tutorial on manipulating the DOM with javascript. So far, we have explored the createElement, appendChild, insertBefore, replaceChild and removeChild functions. In this final post, we will explore the createTextNode function, and will then put it all together into a real world example.

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In my last post, we explored the appendChild and insertBefore functions. As I explained, those are two of the three main functions you can use to add a new element into your HTML page. In this post, we will explore the replaceChild and removeChild functions.
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In my last post, I explored the createElement function to begin showing you how to add, remove and replace elements in your HTML pages with javascript. In this post, I will explore the appendChild and insertBefore functions. These are two of the three functions you will use to actually insert the new element you created in the last post.
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In one of my recent posts, I attempted to explain and explore the document object model (DOM) a little bit, in order to help you understand how it can be manipulated. In this series of posts, I will explain how to use javascript to work with the DOM. However, it is important to note that the functions we’ll be using inside of this tutorial are defined by the DOM, and can actually be used in some form or another in any programming language that supports XML. I know for a fact that these same functions are also available in PHP, VBScript and Java. I’m certain that they are available in a host of other languages, as well.

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In the near future, I plan to write a rather in-depth tutorial explaining how to manipulate the DOM using javascript. Essentially, that tutorial will teach how to properly add and remove elements from your Web pages using javascript. If all goes well, that tutorial will be simple enough for beginners to understand, and will help add a lot of power to your javascript arsenal.

However, before I can get into that, we need to explore and understand the DOM. (more…)

I recently had occasion to consider whether to use XML files or a traditional database when constructing a Web-based application at work. It took a lot of careful consideration and research to decide which way I was going to go.

In the end, I chose to use XML files, and I will explain why.

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