In 2000, the W3C Document Object Model Working Group released DOM Level 2 specifications as W3C Recommendations. Those specifications addressed XML, User Interface Events, or CSS. The DOM Level 3 specifications will complete the DOM work by providing several new features.

The Core module has been extended to fully support XML 1.0 and to address the XML Information Set specification, which is the basic data models for XML applications. It also includes support for the XML Base specification, solves the "bootstrapping" problem, and allows the user to pick a DOM implementation based on the features implemented. Several methods were added to make using the DOM easier.

The Events module is extended to include text events (previously known as keyboard events) and event groups.

The Load and Save module provides the ability to load an XML document into a DOM tree and to save a DOM tree into an XML Document. A filtering system is provided for both load and save, to enable the user to select various options, such as validation, turning CDATA sections into text, or choosing the canonical form of XML.

The XPath module provides simple methods to query a DOM tree using XPath 1.0 expressions. It defines a clear mapping between the XPath data model and the DOM, a full support of all XPath 1.0 result types (boolean, number, string, node sets), a full support of XPath nodes (including XPath namespace nodes), and a single node type. XPath Node sets are exposed as iterators or snapshots (direct access).

The Validation module gives the guidance necessary so that valid documents can be modified and still remain valid. The module allows the user to ask questions such as: - can the insertion of a removal of a node make the document invalid? - what is the set of valid children for a specified element?

DOM Level 3 is expected to be released as a set of W3C Recommendations in February 2003. Each specification will come with a Test Suite, worked on jointly with NIST and the public community.