Technical Investigations - Dynamic HTML

Contents
The Myth
Positioning
Scripting
Incompatability
Results
Links

The Myth

Dynamic HTML is a term which has been bandied about on the net recently. It sounds like a new, exciting technology, but in fact it doesn't exist at all. Well, not as a single technology, anyway. The term is used to refer to the combined use of style sheets and Javascript to do interesting and dynamic things to web pages.

Positioning

Style sheets allow the author to put an HTML element, or group of elements, inside a DIV element, to group them together. Netscape and Explorer both extend this idea by allowing the author to specify exactly what pixel position the DIV, or "layer" should appear at. This would have a very limited appeal if it weren't for...

Scripting

Javascript (or JScript in Explorer) adds two important parts to the equation: interactivity and iteration. User events, such as mouse presses, can be detected by the browser, and acted upon, giving interactivity. At the end of an action, a timer can be set for another action to take place, giving iteration. These together allow for moving objects on the page, which can be affected by user actions.

Incompatibility

Netscape does things differently from Explorer. This means that writing DHTML for one will inevitably mean it breaks on the other. If you're going to write DHTML, start off by designing in support for both browsers (and any others you care to mention). The tutorial referenced below explains how to do this.

Results

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