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DHTML and You.

© Robin Friedman

Dynamic HyperText Markup Language. It's been in the news. You may have heard that it's the future of the internet, and that it's out to replace HTML. Let me tell you exactly what DHTML is, and why your webpage can use it.

Basically, DHTML is a combination of Layers, style sheets, Javascript, and HTML to give the programmer full control of the document, even after it is fully loaded. That's what makes it Dynamic. It's main disadvantage is that only Internet Explorer 4.0 can take full advantage of it, and only Netscape 4.0 supports the full javascript and layer movement features.

DHTML can do some amazing things. For example, in Netscape 4, you could use Javascript to detect keys being pressed. Then, having images on different layers, you could move these layers and images corresponding to the keys. In short, you can move images with the keyboard, setting things up for a game to be played right in your browser.

The best thing about DHTML for me, is that if you allready know javascript, and maybe a little layers on top of that, you allready know DHTML.

Programming DHTML can be a bit frustrating, because it's not its own set language. You have to be able to weave together javascript with several unfamiliar types of HTML. To get help on learning DHTML, I would start with InsideDHTML.

But is DHTML the right language choice? Some people say that XML is the real language of the future, and will soon replace HTML and DHTML. But both 4.0 browsers take advantage of DHTML, while XML is yet to be fully supported. Hopefully the next versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape will give us XML support, but as of right now, DHTML is the most advanced HTML - like language you can use.

The copyright of the article DHTML and You. in Linux/Unix is owned by Robin Friedman. Permission to republish DHTML and You. in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.