EventTarget Reference

Interfaces, Properties and Methods

Node knows about parents, children and text; Element adds tags, attributes, geometry and shadow roots; Document is the root and the factory for new nodes. The ParentNode and ChildNode mixins add the modern convenience methods.

Where the main tree members are defined
Interface Key properties Key methods
Node nodeType, parentNode, childNodes, textContent appendChild(), cloneNode(), contains(), normalize()
Element tagName, innerHTML, shadowRoot getBoundingClientRect(), attachShadow(), setHTML()
Document documentElement, body, activeElement, fonts createElement(), importNode(), elementsFromPoint()
Mixins children, firstElementChild, nextElementSibling append(), before(), remove(), moveBefore()

Classic Node methods take one node and need the parent; mixin methods take any number of nodes or strings and are called on the node you hold, so prefer them. Members named ...Element... and children skip text and comment nodes; childNodes and nextSibling do not.