children | NN n/a IE 4 DOM n/a
A collection of all elements contained in the current element. Note that unlike the childNodes collection, children counts only elements and not text nodes. Collection members are sorted in source code order. Internet Explorer lets you use array notation or parentheses to access a single element in the collection.
Object Model Reference
    document.getElementById("elementID").children(i)
    document.getElementById("elementID").children[i]
Object-Specific Properties

length

Object-Specific Methods

item( ) | namedItem( ) | tags( ) | urns( )

Object-Specific Event Handler Properties
None.

children[ ] | NN n/a IE 4 DOM n/a
| Read-only
Returns an array of all first-level HTML element objects contained by the current element. This collection differs from the all[ ] collection in that it contains references only to the immediate children of the current element (whereas the all[ ] collection transcends generations). For example, document.body.children[ ] might contain a form, but no reference to form elements nested inside the form. Items in this array are indexed (zero-based) in source code order. In contrast to the childNodes[ ] array, the scope of this property is the element, not the node. See the children object.
Example
    for (var i = 0; i < elementRef.children.length; i++) {
    		    if (elementRef.children[i].tagName == "FORM") {
    		        // operate on a form element
    		    }
    		}
Value
Array of element object references.
Default
Array of length zero.

length | NN n/a IE 4 DOM n/a
| Read-only
Returns the number of elements in the collection.
Example
    var howMany = document.body.children.length;
Value
Integer.

item( ) | NN n/a IE 4 DOM n/a
item(index) |
Returns an element object corresponding to the element matching the index value in source code order.
Parameters

index

  A zero-based integer corresponding to the specified item in source code order (nested within the current element).

Returned Value
Reference to an element object. If there is no matches to the parameter, the returned value is null.

namedItem( ) | NN n/a IE 6 DOM n/a
namedItem(IDOrName) |
Returns an element object or collection of objects corresponding to the element matching the parameter string value.
Parameters

IDOrName

  The string that contains the same value as the desired element's id or name attribute.

Returned Value
One element object or collection (array) of element objects. If there are no matches to the parameters, the returned value is null.

tags( ) | NN n/a IE 4 DOM n/a
tags(tagName) |
Returns a collection of objects (among all objects nested within the current collection) whose tags match the tagName parameter. Implemented in all IE collections (see the all.tags( ) method), but redundant for collections of the same element type.

urns( ) | NN n/a IE 5(Win) DOM n/a
urns(URN) |
See the all.urns( ) method.