Difference between Document vs. Window Object in JavaScript

Vishnu K Chandran
2 min readDec 22, 2023

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This blog explores the differences between Document and Window object in JavaScript, focusing on their roles, scopes, and functionalities, as they are essential components of the Document Object Model (DOM) for efficient web development.

Window Object

The Window object is a global object in client-side JavaScript, representing the browser window containing a DOM document and acting as the root of the document object model.

The window object, supported by all browsers, represents the browser’s window and automatically includes global JavaScript objects, functions, and variables as members.

The Window object is responsible for managing global variables, functions, and objects, providing methods for browser interaction and managing properties related to frames, tabs, or windows, such as alert(), confirm(), setTimeout(), and setInterval().

Window Object

Few properties and methods of window objects are,

Properties

window.innerHeight - the inner height of the browser window (in pixels)

window.innerWidth - the inner width of the browser window (in pixels)

Methods

window.open() - open a new window

window.close() - close the current window

window.moveTo() - move the current window

window.resizeTo() - resize the current window

Document Object

The Document object is the HTML document that appears in the browser window and serves as an interface for interacting with the web page’s content. The browser generates a Document Object Model of a web page upon loading it.

The W3C Document Object Model (DOM) is a platform-neutral interface that enables dynamic access and updating of a document’s content, structure, and style by programs and scripts.

The DOM is a logical tree in a document, with methods allowing programmatic access to change its structure, style, or content.

Document Object Model

The DOM manipulation tool offers methods to access and manipulate the structure and content of a document, such as getElementById(), querySelector(), createElement(), and innerHTML. It represents the entire HTML document as a node tree, with the Document object as the root node. It allows dynamic updates and interactions with web page content.

Few properties and methods of Document Object Model,

Properties

element.innerHTML = new html content//Change the inner HTML of an element

element.attribute = new value//Change the attribute value of an HTML element

Methods

document.createElement(element//Create an HTML element

document.removeChild(element)//Remove an HTML element

These are the few methods and properties of DOM, to know more you can refer to MDN docs here.

Conclusion

Understanding the differences between Window and Document objects is crucial in JavaScript and web development. Window manages browser interactions, while Document acts as an interface for content manipulation. Using these functionalities allows developers to create interactive web experiences.

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