title: Selecting DOM elements in Chrome console
body: <p>I'm a bit puzzled by the following: Let's say I've got a paragraph element with the id of <code>para</code>. Using Chromes console, if I say</p>
  
  <pre><code>document.getElementById("para")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm returned with the HTML snippet <code>&lt;p id="para"&gt;....&lt;/p&gt;</code>, whereas if I use for instance the Javascript library D3's selection method and say</p>
  
  <pre><code>d3.select("#para")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm returned with the DOM node and can access all the properties and methods of the paragraph element.</p>
  
  <p>Why this difference?</p>