Online Computer Terms Dictionary - D

Dynamic HTML

<language, World-Wide Web> (DHTML) The addition of JavaScript to HTML to allow web pages to change and interact with the user without having to communicate with the server. JavaScript allows the behaviour of the page to be controlled by code that is downloaded with the HTML. It does this by manipulating the Document Object Model (DOM).

The term DHTML is often also taken to include the use of "style" information to give finer control of HTML layout. The style information can be supplied as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or as "style" attributes (which can be manipulated by JavaScript). Layers are often also used with DHTML.

Both the JavaScript and style data can be included in the HTML file or in a separate file referred to from the HTML. Some web browsers allow other languages (e.g. VBScript or Perl) to be used instead of JavaScript but this is less common.

DHTML can be viewed in Internet Explorer 4+, Firefox and Netscape Communicator 4+ but, as usual, Microsoft disagree on how DHTML should be implemented. The Document Object Model Group of the World Wide Web Consortium is developing standards for DHTML.

http://www.w3c.org/DOM/.

(2005-10-17)