DHTML Tutorials

DHTML stands for Dynamic HTML and unlike HTML makes every element of a page interactively controllable, before, during, and after the page is rendered.This means you can make things move, appear and disappear, overlap, change styles, and interact with the user.

Through DHTML, users get a more engaging and interactive web experience without constant calls to a web server or the overhead of loading new pages, plug-ins, or large applets.

According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): "Dynamic HTML is a term used by some vendors to describe the combination of HTML, style sheets and scripts that allows documents to be animated."

DHTML is implemented with the following technologies:

• The HTML used to present documents.
• Cascading Style sheets (CSS) to define a style for multiple objects and their position on the page.
• The Document Object Model (DOM), suggesting a hierarchy of objects to facilitate their manipulation.
• JavaScript (and possibly the VBScript).

Advantages of using DHTML

1. DHTML files are small compared to other interactive media like Flash or Shockwave, so they download more quickly.
2. Both Microsoft and Netscape currently support DHTML in some shape or form.
3. No plug-ins, ActiveX controls, or Java is necessary.
4. There are fewer calls to the server. Since you can change and move elements after a page is loaded, you don't need to create separate pages just to change styles or display a menu

Disadvantages of using DHTML

1. Only new browsers support DHTML. Only recent browsers like Netscape 6, IE 5.5, and Opera 5 support standards-based DHTML.
2. Netscape and Microsoft have different DHTML implementations.make creating a DHTML document tedious and complicated.