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.
(https://w3c.org/DOM/).
(2005-10-17)