from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
Dynamic HTML
DHTML
<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://w3c.org/DOM/).
(2005-10-17)