If you want to parse the DOM for the internet at large, you need a real browser. There are simply too many sites with really bad HTML to be parsed reliably with anything else.
It's merely an integration library for the netsurf browser. It's the html parser for a real browser. I considered using the parser from other browsers like firefox or webkit, but netsurf had the fewest external dependencies.
phantomjs-node uses ridiculous hacks. Not being rude but I think the author was drunk when writing that. I ended up wasting quite some time when trying to customize it.
You do NOT need to use any hacks whatsoever to run dnode on phantom, just browserify(https://github.com/substack/node-browserify) the shoe and dnode modules and use the example code at https://github.com/substack/dnode .