Dynamic HTML

What is so dynamic about DHTML? Well for starters, you don't need a web server. DHTML is 100% client-side technology. It is actually a mix of technologies.

DHTML Soup

  • HTML 4.0
  • JavaScript (or any scripting language)
  • CSS - Cascading StyleSheets
  • DOM - Document Object Model

With these 4 technologies alive on a browser, any web page can become a dynamic application. Dynamic means that it can actually rewrite itself. Often when you think web pages you often think of server-side JSP scriplets, Perl scripts, or ColdFusion creating dynamic content. Do not get confused, DHTML is not dynamic on the server and has nothing to do with server-side scripting.

Dynamic HTML, The Definitive Reference by Danny Goodman

A great book on the subject is the O'Reilly Dynamic HTML, The Definitive Reference by Danny Goodman . This book is broken up into 4 sections, you guessed it: HTML 4.0, JavaScript, CSS, and DOM references.

For more information read about JavaScript.