Techniques to support various operations (e.g., drag-and-drop, stretch) and data manipulation in a browser environment, e.g., to allow data for an object located in one part of a document (e.g., a webpage) to be associated with another object located in another part of the document. In one design, a document includes at least one applet for at least one display window. Each applet includes at least one browser object representative of an entity for an end application. Each browser object is associated with a respective set of one or more scripts used to facilitate a set of one or more operations (e.g., drag-and-drop, stretch) permitted for the browser object. A data transfer object is generated upon initiation of a selected operation and includes data associated with a source (browser) object. The data transfer object may thereafter be operated on by various target (browser) object to effectuate the selected operation.