[BigZaphod]

Javascript's design owes a lot to Self. Modifying an object's slots in realtime was pretty much the whole point of Self and what lead to the concept of a prototype language. (Well, technically, I think Self was simply an implementation of the already-existent prototype language idea... but is an idea actually useful before there's an implementation of it to test theories with? Chicken-egg... :))

The DOM (as in Document Object Model defined by W3C) has nothing to do with Javascript - it's just an API originally designed for accessing the various parts of HTML. It was set up so that it could be implemented for almost any language. In fact, had it actually used some of the more advanced (Self-inspired) features of Javascript within the definition of the DOM, the DOM may not have been such a pain in the ass. :)

What Javascript did manage to do that was very important is that it ended up becoming not only the most installed programming language of all time, but unlike BASIC, it's actually a pretty damn good language under the covers. So if anything, the fundamental innovation of Javascript within every browser has basically yielded another BASIC-like inspiration to a whole new generation of programmers. Except this time, their intro language was much more abstractly powerful.