Dynamic HTML The Definitive Reference (2nd edition)

TheThinMan writes "This is the completely updated second edition. Four years ago I made the first edition my constant companion and it has saved me, and any other web developer nearby, weeks of head-scratching since. Back then we had to tussle with Netscape Navigator 4 vs. Internet Explorer 4 while supporting the version 3 browsers. Though the browser war is over and all sides have vastly improved their products, DHTML has moved on. This edition brings home just how much has changed and just how much is new. Most importantly, it helps you to develop web interfaces that will be cross-platform from the outset." TheThinMan's thoughts on the book continue below. Dynamic HTML The Definitive Reference (2nd edition) author Danny Goodman pages 1400 publisher O'Reilly rating 10 reviewer TheThinMan ISBN 0596003161 summary The most complete reference work for HTML, DOM, CSS and Javascript, cross referenced for all the major browsers and standards.

What's in the book?

The book is not an introduction to DHTML but it does have an 183-page section on Applying DHTML that covers not only the current state of the art but also gives clear guidance in making use of all the features. The guidance is of a good enough standard that a firm's Quality program could simply cite this book as the basis for the web development standards that a team adopts. Goodman makes it very clear that he is not going to discuss the DHTML that Navigator 4 introduced, the <layer> tag and JavaScript style rules, but points out that they are covered in the first edition should you really need to know.

The layout of the book is the same as the first edition, with the reference sections divided into HTML, DOM (Document Object Model), CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and JavaScript. A new section for Events also makes an appearance. The reference sections on HTML and DOM have sub-sections that precede them on the shared attributes of all elements. These are particularly useful and I think should be committed to memory.

There is also a very curious Cross Reference section that has an HTML/XHTML attribute index and a DOM property, method and event handler index. It takes each HTML/XHTML attribute and shows which elements support it and then each DOM scriptable object property, method and event and which objects support it. I'll confess I've never had any call to use this section but I can see how it could come in handy -- and it hardly takes up much dead tree.

The upper limit of standards coverage is HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.1, CSS Level 2, DOM Level 2, and JavaScript (or ECMAScript) 1.5. The browsers considered are IE6 (Windows), IE 5.1 (Mac), Netscape Navigator 6 and 7 and Mozilla 1.0. Opera is also mentioned in the section on Applying DHTML in that it mostly follows the IE DOM. The timeline for any element can go back as far as HTML 3.2, Navigator 2 or IE 3.

As you would expect, there are some useful appendices: Color Names and RGB Values, which I expect to be using more now as sites are required to meet Accessibility guidelines; HTML Character Entities, for when you don't have a copy of Macromedia Dreamweaver or when your favourite HTML editor doesn't have a complete list; Keyboard Event Character Values, for your scripts when you want to catch all those key presses; Internet Explorer Commands, which along with the MSHTML.dll can allow the creation of a very neat content editor quite quickly and easily; and finally, an HTML/XHTML DTD Support cross-reference that may help catch validation errors as you move from an HTML 4.01 Transitional DTD to a full-on XHTML 1.0 Strict DTD.

What makes it worth having?

The quality of Danny Goodman's writing is both technically accurate and easy to read. The clarity and lack of fluff is good, but there is no skimping on detail where such is needed to illuminate a point. Let's face it: web development is not as complex as most software engineering or systems development tasks, but it is a discipline with quite a wide base, reflected in the 1400 pages of this tome. I wouldn't trim any of it, however, and I expect that after about a year of use I will have referred to a good proportion of the contents. Take, for instance, Goodman's estimate that there are more than 15,000 unique instances of properties, methods, and event handlers supported by numerous document objects and you get an good impression of the size of the documentation required.

The book could be regarded as two books in one: There is the Applying DHTML book and the Reference book. The best things about the reference sections are the excellent descriptions, the clear little examples, and especially the quick summary of where you can expect these things to be supported. Referring to this book is the simplest way to avoid going down the proprietary browser extension cul de sac.

The Applying DHTML section is worth reading all the way through. It is great for getting yourself into the various technologies and seeing how they are meant to work. There are interesting points made on how each of the technologies are evolving. There's material contrasting the various DOM implementations and there are chapters on style sheets, positioning in CSS, making the content dynamic (of course, this is what DHTML is all about, after all) and scripting events.

There is a very useful cross-platform API for DHTML (which can be downloaded as a zip file along with the other examples from the book on O'Reilly's web site). I've used the version from the first edition quite a lot, and I've used the new version in my most recent work. It doesn't rely on browser version sniffing, but rather on object detection, which is explained with some examples, and can be easily extended to handle any DOM call you may wish to make. The API is especially useful for any CSS positioning tasks you may have. Goodman also goes over other strategies you can adopt to make your sites cross-platform, such as page branching, designing for a common denominator, and some other, neater, solutions.

There isn't anything on Accessibility other than a single paragraph drawing your attention to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). DHTML and Accessibility could be considered inimical but that isn't the case and I'd perhaps have liked to see this elaborated on with some suggestions on how to achieve an Accessible site while still using DHTML. In practice, however, I've found it easy to meet the Priority 1 checkpoints (or A rating) set by the WAI even with a complete DHTML site so perhaps this is not really an issue.

I find this book really useful. I can't imagine any web developer doing without this book and managing to produce a good cross-platform solution, and I also can't imagine that developer needing any other texts on any of the technologies covered here. I certainly don't have any others on my desk today.

The O'Reilly web site has a complete Table of Contents available. You can purchase Dynamic HTML The Definitive Reference from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Yarr, shiver me timberlake

[Anonymous Coward]

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c to the izzex
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books are too much money, but..

[cerebralsugar]

Used copies of first edition are pretty darned cheap.

Re:books are too much money, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of good DHTML examples by Jeff Rule at http://www.ruleweb.com/dhtml/ He also has a book

Re:books are too much money, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

A good book is NEVER too much money. A good tech book might cost $100 here in Oz. That's my hourly rate. If it saves me one hour in, say, 2 years, it's made back its cost.
The worth of a good bok is that if it is worth reading (my time reading it costs more than the book!) then its cheap to buy.

Beginner Book

[peterdaly]

This book, as he says, "is not an introduction to DHTML". If you are looking for a book to get started with DHTML, I highly reccomend Essential CSS and DHTML for Web Professionals (2nd Edition), by Dan Livingston. I learned most of my DHTML fundementals from the first edition, and recently purchased the second edition as well. This is a very short book, an unlike many of its kind, can be read almost in "novel" form to get a basic overview without getting bored. You can then go back and try the examples, and actually implement some DHTML. Without a doubt one of the best web development books I have gotten.

-Pete

Re:Beginner Book

[DopeRider]

I highly reccomend Essential CSS and DHTML for Web Professionals (2nd Edition)

I also used this book as a quick reference. But I'm afraid I didn't like it at all. The sample code didn't work most of the time. I found myself writing code just to test a feature that was suposed to work.

Re:Beginner Book

[Iffy Bonzoolie]

I learned most of my DHTML by playing with Dan Steinman's Dynamic Duo tutorial. He doesn't really support Mozilla yet, but you can *generally* convert IE DHTML javascript into Mozilla pretty easily by using a couple ECMAScript methods instead of IE specific collections (like document.all). I got ramped up very quickly in a short amount of time using Dan's tutorial.

-DG

Re:Beginner Book

[Azureash]

...you can *generally* convert IE DHTML javascript into Mozilla pretty easily by using a couple ECMAScript methods...

IE DHTML javascript into Mozilla?

Whhhhhaaaaatttt???

That's just embarrassing.

Re:Beginner Book

[Iffy Bonzoolie]

Whhhhhaaaaatttt???

Err, okay what I meant was:

Say you had some JavaScript code embedded inside, or referenced from, an HTML page - and this JavaScript code did some "DHTML" stuff... it might rewrite parts of the page, move absolutely positioned elements around, make elements visible/invisible... but it was written just for IE. Dan Steinman talks about how to do certain DHTML things in both IE and Netscape 4, which are VERY different in this regard.

But, say you had this code that worked on IE and you wanted to "port" it to Mozilla. Even though the information on his site does not really cover that, I was just saying that it's fairly easy to do, you just have to follow the ECMAScript standard, which both IE and Mozilla support, and stay away from IE-specific DHTML features.

I then was citing an example of the document.all collection, which is IE specific. You can instead use the DOM method document.getElementById() to do the exact same thing - and it works in both browsers.

Another example I recently discovered was element.innerText - it doesn't work in Mozilla. So you have to use (as far as I can tell) element.innerHtml which works in both browsers, and just make sure that your text is HTML entity-encoded properly.

Sorry if that wasn't clear!

-If

First Edition was great...

[Pyrosz]

As I just stated, the first edition was a great book and it has never left my desk since the day I bought it. If your a serious web developer or just a part time page monkey, this book (the first or I guess now the second edition) is for you. Hard to go wrong buying an O'Reilly book.

Re:First Edition was great...

[steve_l]

>Hard to go wrong buying an O'Reilly book

I dunno about that. A fair few of the corner case ORA books are pretty mediocre. Some of them are great -its these that create the reputation that other volumes just use, rather than expand.

To be fair, the great:good:mediocre ratio for oreilly is better than most other publishers.

Re:First Edition was great...

[theNetImp]

This is my most used book, I have 3 copies of First Edition, one for work, one for home, and one stays in my backpack. Looks like I am out to update it tonight. :-D yay updates!!

I don't mean this as a troll, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

... no matter how good the book is (and it probably is, I'm not meaning to say it isn't), doing good html is really hard / complicated. A good book isn't going to automatically mean you master it - you need to practice like mad, read the source code for websites, create websites, have common sense, a decent understanding of the human-usability thing (not easy), and be prepared to do the tedious work that is typing out html once you've mastered the skill in the first place.

Re:I don't mean this as a troll, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

doing good html is really hard / complicated

Bollocks! HTML is child's play compared to system programming languages such as C and assembly

Re:I don't mean this as a troll, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try teaching the average person Html and tell them to recode a clone of the Slashdot front page: it is very hard for just about anybody: this is why even web designers resort to templates and software editors.

Re:I don't mean this as a troll, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are mixing up HTML with web design. It is easy to create a website but it is very difficult to design a good website. Any book on HTML or any other programming language isn't going to teach you esthetics and usability. It isn't their purpose. We have guys like Tufte, Nielsen, Krug, etc. to help with that.

Re:I don't mean this as a troll, but...

[Laura_007]

Agreed! HTML can be really tough, especially remembering all the closing tags and the esoterics of XHTML, however it can be mastered with some effort!

This guide was a pretty good start for me, and then I mastered the nuances of embedded tags. Don't even get me started about the complexity of CSS cascading! I've programmed axiographical embedded C++ designs (why is C++ mostly programmed by men? I think it's a very feminine language) that were far easier than HTML.

One of the toughtest things about programming for the web is cross platform: Those little differences between platforms that can eat hours of your time trying to figure out whether the platform implements the 3rd or 4th recommendation of the X-DOMVG standard.

Re:I don't mean this as a troll, but...

[nick_davison]

Normally I'd agree with you but there's the argument that this book really is that good (I've been using the first edition as my [very nearly] exclusive reference for a couple of years now).

One of the problems with the way most people used to learn HTML is that they picked apart other people's examples, trying to figure out how things worked, with no formal guide. The end result was most people knew a <p> tag worked fine on its own but had no understanding of what it was really doing, why you may want to use a </p> tag or any of the other issues.

This book [1st ed. not 2nd - I'll admit, I've not seen the 2nd yet] works by giving a very clear introduction to the concepts and then simply laying out exactly the information you need, with a quick explanation and a short example.

Can that replace all of the experience you'd gain through working? Of course not. But it really does save the time spent acquiring a vast amount of it: All of those additional parameters that you'd need to chance upon seeing somewhere else are laid out, giving you the inspiration; the complete specifications are laid out (so things like regexps that I'd never seen in JavaScript were covered; "pure" examples are given so you're not hacking apart an example hacked apart from someone else's hacked apart example; the clear layout and concise explanations mean you understand how everything fits together that much more easily, giving you a head start on the whole "common sense" side.

So no, no one anything can give you a complete grounding: The perfect knowledge of HCI, the perfect knowledge of photoshop, the perfect knowledge of HTML structure and tags, none of those things alone make you a well balanced expert. But, for the price (~$45) and the speed (how quickly you can find exactly the information you're after in this well laid out book), it's a better (more efficient) investment than anything else I've come across.

It really is that good.

Re:I don't mean this as a troll, but...

[dubiousmike]

I thought that's what Frontpage is for.

Right?

:P

Re:I don't mean this as a troll, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Using HTML the way it was meant to be used (with things like the strong tag, not FONT and DHTML and other monstrosities) is very easy. Misusing it to force a specific layout upon the user is very difficult, but an amazing number of man-millennia have been spent doing so. It would, of course, be much easier to just distribute PDFs with hyperlinks if one wants to require that a website looks a specific way, but why do so when you can manage to cram everything into HTML?

I'm quite serious. If your only goal is to make a preformatted layout that only works in a single program (as current websites frequently do with IE), Adobe is far ahead of Microsoft.

Re:I don't mean this as a troll, but...

[incripshin]

It can't make you a master, but it can help you understand the underlying concepts of everything so you can take in the full scope of what the language is. The better you understand it, the better you'll be at it. I've read books on C++ that were hellish. I read one that was extremely cryptic, in which I couldn't learn anything, and I've read some that were not explaining things, so I would not understand it well. I HAVE found some books in which the author took the time to explain the topic, and not with loads of techno jargon that he picked up long after he learned the language. If you ask me, books like that (very techy) are just plain dangerous to learners.

In summation, well written books CAN give you the tools and knowledge that are fundamental in mastering the language. The reader must use them. I can only show you the door. You are the one who has to open it. - Morpheus

incripshin

Re:I don't mean this as a troll, but...

[vbweenie]

I don't think HTML is hard or complicated at all. Good website design is hard, and giving good usability is very hard indeed. If you're worrying about the right things, then the actual mark-up should be the least of your worries.

DHTML standard?

[redtail1]

Nice review. I was Googling the web yesterday trying to figure out if any DHTML techniques have become standards. Can anyone point me to a site or two that answers this question? I have my heart set on not writing another line of code that won't work in one browser or another. Within reason.

Re:DHTML standard?

[larien]

That's a good point; much as I'd love to add stuff to my web pages, I don't want to block out some of the lower denominators such as lynx or, possibly more importantly, software such as readers for the blind. If DHTML screws up on those, you're losing a portion of your audience; not perhaps a large one, but it's still there.

Re:DHTML standard?

[KingAdrock]

HTML and CSS are both standards and can be validated at the W3C. As for Javascript I have the same question. It Javascript at all standardized? Does a Javascript validator exist anywhere?

Re:DHTML standard?

[ism]

DHTML is dependant on two things: (1)browser ECMAScript compatibility and (2)the browser's DOM. ECMAScript Core is implemented 100% correctly as per the spec on most modern (version 5) browsers. The problem is the DOM. The Gecko and IE engines both support the W3C DOM spec but there are still some minor differences. DOM Level 2 is not yet 100% implemented on either browser engine afaik. The other problem is that HTML also depends on event bindings to the DOM. Mozilla implements the W3C DOM-Events model, and IE uses its own event model.

Besides the major two browsers, Opera does in fact implement a great deal of DOM Level 1. I'm not up to date on Konqueror but last I checked it supported a good chunk of DOM Level 1. DHTML on Macs is relegated mostly to IE for Mac, but beware, it acts differently from IE for Win. You need to test them as two separate browsers. I haven't checked iCab lately, but last year it was beyond hope. There's also Chimera, a Gecko port, which should act the same as other Gecko engine browsers. Some people are still using Netscape 4 and you're stuck with a layers DOM there, totally different from any other DOM.

So it really depends on what browsers you are targetting and what kind of things you want to do. DOM Level 1 is about as close a standard as you can get, but you're still going to have some browser-specific code.

Re:DHTML standard?

[ccgr]

DHTML works well with Internet Explorer. Other browsers have difficulty.

Re:DHTML standard?

[Kombat]

much as I'd love to add stuff to my web pages, I don't want to block out some of the lower denominators such as lynx

Well, that's certainly a pretty low denominator! But let me ask you this. If you were commissioned to design a new 8-lane, divided highway, would you set the speed limit at 30 mph, to ensure that those who choose to drive around in Model T's can keep up with traffic?

Re:DHTML standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

DHTML works well with Internet Explorer. Other browsers have difficulty.

Saying "Microsoft's own extensions to DHTML work well in Internet Explorer. Other browsers have difficulty." might be more appropriate.

Mozilla 1.0 supports the latest W3C standards as well if not better than IE6.

Re:DHTML standard?

[ray-auch]

Opera (at least up to v6) doesn't support DOM except for reading, which means it is pretty much useless for DHTML - the Dynamic bit is kind of lost if you can't actually change anything.

Re:DHTML standard?

[ictatha]

"If you were commissioned to design a new 8-lane, divided highway, would you set the speed limit at 30 mph, to ensure that those who choose to drive around in Model T's can keep up with traffic?"

This isn't a very good analogy. When you go to a non-dhtml web page, are you dissapointed, or othwise negatively affected specifically because they aren't using DHTML? Your analogy states that everyone would be negatively affected by someone's choice not to use the latest and greatest.

I will counter your analogy with another bad/wrong analogy:

If you were commissioned to design a new 8-lane, divided highway, would you make all the road signs fly from one side of the road to the other? Would you have "Hit the Monkey and Win $20" interactive highway advertisements? Would you make drivers have to drive over a certain spot to see certain signs?

It all depends. Most of the things in my bad analogy wouldn't be good ideas. It just depends on the audience, and what you are trying to convey. Not using the latest and greatest isn't a 100% sure sign that a site will be a bad experience. That depends on the skill and intent of the designers/programmers, not on the technology they use.

Re:DHTML standard?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Well, that's certainly a pretty low denominator! But let me ask you this. If you were commissioned to design a new 8-lane, divided highway, would you set the speed limit at 30 mph, to ensure that those who choose to drive around in Model T's can keep up with traffic?"

Arrrgh I'm sick of people arguing with metaphors! Feels like I'm watching an old episode of Star Trek!

There are reasons to not rely 100% on the imagery of your site. For example: I went on a business trip, the modem connection was awful. I turned off images in Opera so that I could browse the web in a reasonable amount of time. The reason why that works is because most of the sites I went to had documented what each of the images are.

It's a matter of accessibility, not speed. If you support blind people, for example, then your website doesn't suddely slow down to 30mph as your poorly chosen metaphor suggests.

Re:DHTML standard?

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

All the current major browsers support DHTML, which is nothing more than manipulating the DOM through scripting. This includes MSIE, Opera, Mozilla-based browsers, and possibly others. The DOM is a W3C standard, thus any browsers which complies to that standard should be DHML-compatible.

Nice troll.

Re:DHTML standard?

[Kombat]

If you were commissioned to design a new 8-lane, divided highway, would you make all the road signs fly from one side of the road to the other? Would you have "Hit the Monkey and Win $20" interactive highway advertisements? Would you make drivers have to drive over a certain spot to see certain signs?

Of course not, but I would have stoplights here and there that occassionally need to change, and possibly some railway crossings that need to flash, with gates that rise and fall, and ...

Believe it or not, but dynamic content on the web is USEFUL when not abused.

Re:DHTML standard?

[scrytch]

This isn't a very good analogy. When you go to a non-dhtml web page, are you dissapointed, or othwise negatively affected specifically because they aren't using DHTML?

Well, yeah, I'd really like the filtering and sorting and thread grouping and so forth to be client-side on slashdot. Never gonna happen, because it ain't DHTML. Screwdriver? Damn newfangled inventions, why can't people be happy with this here hammer. Works for me every time, good old hammer.

Re:DHTML standard?

[GS11_Pus]

Arrgh I'm sick of people arguing with metaphors! Feels like I'm watching an old episode of Star Trek!

And similes are better? :-)

First Edition is Great

[Arkham]

I don't have the new edition (mine is the first edition, publiched July 1998), but I couldn't imagine being a developer of web-facing applications without this book. The JavaScript reference and the DOM references are great, and the CSS reference is really useful as well. I don't care much for the layer aspects of DHTML (behavior is inconsistent), but this book is still a great addition to any developer's library.

The war is over?

[Proudrooster]

Though The browser war is over ...

To borrow a quote from my friend, "John 'Bluto' Blutarski" who spent most of his college career on double secret probation.

Was it over when the Nazi's bombed Pearl Harbor?
Well it ain't over now!!!!!!

The browser wars won't be over until Mozilla stomps IE.
Other than that, the book sounds excellent!

Re:The war is over?

[Minn_Kota_Marine]

HAHAHA! great quote!

however, mozilla still has a long way to go before it stomps IE. even then, do you think microsoft will just give up? a company with 40$Billion in cash who takes pride in "destroying" competitors, give up?

Re:The war is over?

[Anonymous Coward]

".and since Mozilla blows right now, this war will be fought well into my old age." And you're how old? I'd say around 80 with around 5 years to go.

Re:The war is over?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's Senator Blutarski thank you very much!

Re:The war is over?

[mblase]

Was it over when the Nazi's[sic] bombed Pearl Harbor?

Sorry, I thought the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The Nazis were still busy somewhere in Europe. My world history isn't that great, but I could've sworn I read this somewhere.

Re:The war is over?

[psgalbraith]

> Was it over when the Nazi's[sic] bombed Pearl Harbor?

Sorry, I thought the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

I thought that was intentional. It certainly made it funnier.

Re:The war is over?

[don_carnage]

Perhaps you should watch Animal House.

Re:The war is over?

[LazloTheDog]

That's Senator Blutarski to you!

JM

Re:The war is over?

[Evil Adrian]

If you say so. Mozilla is bloated, slow, and sucks. IE is rockin' it's weak ass.

Re:The war is over?

[ShieldW0lf]

No, the war was over when the americans NUKED Hiroshima.

DHTML standards set by W3C and ECMA

[yerricde]

figure out if any DHTML techniques have become standards.

DHTML means manipulation of the HTML DOM through ECMAScript. The HTML DOM is a W3C Recommendation, and ECMAScript is a European international standard.

Re:DHTML standards set by W3C and ECMA

[Jugalator]

.. and both these standards are well supported, at least for normal use, by both IE, Mozilla and (I think) Opera. I think this as a very overlooked fact, by looking at all the trouble web designers are going through making special cases for the amounts of browser/version combinations.

Over?

[Jade E. 2]

The browser war is over? Since when?

Oh, that's right, you only have to design for IE now. Silly me, I forgot that all the other browsers are dead. That, or maybe, they all render DHTML exactly the same now? (HAHAHA)

(Well, maybe Lynx is dead, it's web page seems to be down...)

Re:Over?

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched over to links a long time ago...

Re:Over?

[Jade E. 2]

I switched over to links [mff.cuni.cz] a long time ago...

First, I was wrong, Lynx's website works fine when you frigging spell 'browser' right in the URL.

Doh.

And second, the sourceforge link in my original post is for Links :)

Re:Over?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea because they amount to what percentage of users? If you have an average of 1000 hits a month on your lowly web page, are you really going to want to support anything else, especially if you don't really have the time to install 10 different browsers.

While you're at it, you better make sure it works with Mozilla 1.0 and 1.1. You better also make sure it still works with Netscape 6 (6.x) and 7. Then how about Opera 5 and 6. Then there is also Konqueror.

So I say make sure it works under IE 5+ and then do a quick check with the Mozilla 1.0. Then later make sure it works completely with Mozilla 1.0 and Netscape 6. Then start branching out.

I use Linux and Konqueror every day. I also sometimes use Mozilla or Opera because some sites render differently or the browsers crash or hang on various web pages -- probably nsplugins shitty under *nix. But when I have to develop some web page or web application, I make sure it works with IE and do a run through with Mozilla 1.0. If I have time I start branching out.

Re:Over?

[P-Nuts]

The browser war is over? Since when?

The browser war is certainly not as bad as it once was. Increasing standards support makes it possible to design a site that uses only the subsets of CSS/HTML/whatever that all the major browsers use. You don't need to use the non-standard IE and Netscape extensions that were introduced during the browser war proper.

Corrollary: If you design a site that works only using well-documented standards, such as the W3 ones, and it works on a selection of browsers, then anything it doesn't work quite right on only needs to improve its standards support.

Re:Over?

[elodan]

(Well, maybe Lynx is dead, it's web page seems to be down...)
Or maybe you could check your links instead :-)

Re:Over?

[jbrownc1]

Looking at the cumulative weblogs for my site (8/2000-10/2002), 65% of the visits are from one version or another of IE. Netscape 4.0 seems to have a pretty high hit rate (5.5%), but I think that's me hitting it with Chimera all the time. The rest is kinda evenly spread out with old versions of Netscape, Googlebot, Gulliver, [unknown], and MSProxy.

Looking at the most recent quarter, however, things are a bit more dire, with various flavors of IE accounting for 80% of the visits. Various flavors of Netscape account for only 9.8%, with Googlebot, Ask Jeeves, etc, taking up the rest.

The war may not be over, but I wouldn't get too cocky about who's winning just yet.

Re:Over?

[nege]

nah, its "links" now. heh.

(its all in the "heh" folks)

Re:Over?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like one of those guys who still has a confederate flag in his house.

Re:Over?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, during the browser wars they were introducing things like tables and colors, things everyone needed. Today you don't have to worry too much about the differences if you're just creating clean simple web pages.

forgot my point...

[xintegerx]

And the point is, this book doesn't have much market because for the tasks 99.99% of web developers would have use for, they could just study the source code of other web sites. The only people who should read an advanced book like this would be people trying to develop more-complex DHTML floating ads. And that is why there is going to be little market for this book.

Re:forgot my point...

[StuffYourReligion]

And the point is, this book doesn't have much market because for the tasks 99.99% of web developers would have use for, they could just study the source code of other web sites. The only people who should read an advanced book like this would be people trying to develop more-complex DHTML floating ads. And that is why there is going to be little market for this book.

I diagree. IMHO this is not an advanced book; I hardly what a was before I picked up the first edition (aka "The WebDev Bible") and with this book at my side I learned to do everything that was ever asked of me--including some very complex pages--and around my (still running) dot-com, they soon gave me the dubious honor of being called "the javascript king".

The book helps you to do very advanced things if you (feel the) need to, but I think it is an excellent introduction to HTML/DHTML as well. And for those who pick up new things fairly quickly, the reference section is where you'll spend most of your time, only looking at the well-written and easy-to-read earlier chapters when you're trying to understand some subtelties of CSS or something.

When learning any new language, I always look for a good reference rather than some 'please hold my hand' sort of book. I was very happy to have found it in (the first edition of) this book.

And as far as studying the source code of other web sites, yes, that can be helpful, but considering the poor coding skills of most people out there (particularly web developers, or am I being unfair?), it can also be a very bad idea. Learning by example is really only a good idea when you [know you have] have good examples.

Even with a well-thumbed copy of this book on your desk you will still find yourself looking at the source for many web pages, but only for a quick glance to figure out how something someone else wrote works (or why it doesn't).

I saw the 2nd Edition in the store the other day, and was tempted to get it but I still haven't really found the 1st Edition lacking. If I bought I'm sure I'd agree with the author of this review, however.

If you are a web developer, this should be your bible.

P.S.: Please pay attention to the bits about cross-browser compatibility.
Thanks!

Re:Little market for this book....

[Pyrosz]

Although I consider the parent thread flamebait, I will respond anyway. The book is not just about DHTML, it is in fact a very good reference for HTML, CSS, and Javascript which are used every day by most web developers. The book outlines which tags are supported by what browsers and thus allows you to create a site that is accessable by all. The book is good for anyone who does or doesnt use DHTML just due to the fact that is is a general reference book.

Re:Little market for this book....

[taeric]

From where I look at this, the market is actually quite different.

I would say the vast majority of sites I have personally ever worked on have been internal projects. Using web standards to create a front end for an application is a very appealing idea. After all, if one decides to turn the application into a distributed app, there is a lot less work.

This is where I see the advanced topics of DHTML and JavaScript being used, not in the latest homepage of some stranger. Probably not even in the latest shopping site, which was probably designed years ago for ultimate compatibility.

As an aside, with Mozilla (the engine) gaining in popularity as an application framework, I can only see these topics gaining even more relevance.

10 Rating?

[BShive]

I liked the 1st edition too, so I'm not suprised that the 2nd got such a rave rating, but 10? I would have liked to see more information on why it's better than the first edition. Not mentioning much in the way of accessibility is a big minus for me working on corporate sites since Section 508 compliance required.

Amazon has it cheaper ($41.97) then B&N by the way.

Re:10 Rating?

[Gabey]

And bookpool has it even cheaper ($36.50). I don't work for them, just a very happy customer. For any IT/CS type books, bookpool is cheapest probably 90% of the time...

-Gabe

good place for VRML beginners?

[Gizzmonic]

I missed the web design glut of the late nineties, but now I find myself wanting to learn web design to assist the overwhelmed (and mostly unemployed) graphic design staff.

is this a book a good place to start? I rented an HTML book from the library back in the days of blinking text and "exciting Java applets" but now i think it mostly props up my couch (it had a chapter on VRML).

So VRML seems pretty cool. The Chapter was called Flying through the web and it suggested that the future web will be organized sort of like everquest, but with less load time. Is that a dystopian future? ;)

Anyway: should I buy this book and learn HTML this way, or should I pay some tutor who used to work at pets.com or something?

Re:good place for VRML beginners?

[BShive]

VRML is/was quite cool - I did work on a VRML viewer using OpenGL for an internship. Unfortunately after all they hype it never went very far, the large download sizes really hurt it's acceptance. Datafiles were one huge honkin' text file. The structure was nice and pretty easy to parse though. That was a fun project to work on.

Buy a book, try stuff out - learn to love CSS. Visit UseIt too.

Re:good place for VRML beginners?

[Anonymous Coward]

well-that's an interesting way to put it. And your sig is both funny and true.

Re:good place for VRML beginners?

[Anonymous Coward]

I once had the same fascination, but I quickly learned that VRML is not very popular. Well, at least not on the internet. Inside intranets it might work well.

Here is the problem.

If you try to code it by hand it soon gets very complicated just to make a polygon. Its easy to do a cylinder or sphere or cube, but after that it gets dangerous. You have to really know what you are doing. Also, repeating shapes means you have to repeat the code and translate the positions. For example, a greek temple .wrl file would be big because even though most of the shapes are the same, you have to duplicate the code for each column.

That is why vrml is really only good for intranets were large files can be viewed. And in these cases IGES is usually used instead.

The best VRML I have ever seen is from the blaxxon website. Also, Microstation Modeler (an AutoCAD, Solidworks, Inventor competitor) outputs some very nice VRML pages.

Unfortunately, the VRML standard is always changing and you will find little support among different versions. Even SGI (the company who invented it) does not seem to care any more.

But anyways, if you want an adequate book on VRML you might try:

The VRML 2.0 Handbook by Jed Hartman & Josie Wernecke. It is old (but should be completely compatible with the newest VRML standard) and the website that has the examples does not exist anymore. Do not learn anything under version 2 because it is obsolete.

Have a nice day.

Re:good place for VRML beginners?

[Anonymous Coward]

VRML is dead. From what I heard, it was basically microsoft that killed it, apparantly a company was on the verge of realeasing a VRML plugin for Netscape, which pissed microsoft off to no end as no such plugin existed for IE. MS bought the company that was working on the netscape plugin and promptly announced that no plugins would be released (including the netscape plugin) until the IE version was ready.

Well, the IE plugin was never ready, the netscape plugin was never released.

(I did read this on slashdot back a few months ago but I'm too lazy to look for it.)

Also, John Carmack had some pretty critical things about VRML, basically that it was a design-by-committee job without much regard to the current state of the art in 3D graphics and would have eventually died on technical grounds anway.

Re:good place for VRML beginners?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually MS did ship a VRML plugin back in the IE4 days -- WorldView or something -- I know this because it used to steal the extention for TGZ files in IE which caused some downloads to break, not because anyone ever used it.

Re:good place for VRML beginners?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget VRML.... BLENDER! http://www.blender.org

Re:good place for VRML beginners?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately after all they hype it never went very far, the large download sizes really hurt it's acceptance. Datafiles were one huge honkin' text file. The structure was nice and pretty easy to parse though. That was a fun project to work on.

Someday, someone is going to catch on that using plan, unstructured text as a file format (*cough* XML) is a really, really stupid idea. Maybe for a single program, but when you're designing infrastructure that's going to affect billions of people for decades...

duh

[Anonymous Coward]

The same thing can be said about any book covering just about any language.

Re:duh

[Pike65]

Most languages have a very rigid. Not to with DHTML.

In DHTML there are seven different ways of doing everything. Five will work in IE. One will crash IE. Three will work in Nutscrape. Three will crash Nutscrape. There is an overlap of one.

Finding that one is harder than a very hard thing that's been starched to make it harder.

Can one person be expert on all of these topics?

[dbaron]

This book covers a huge amount of material. After all, DHTML is just a name used for the interaction of a bunch of different things, and this book seems to try to cover all of them. I wonder whether Goodman is really an expert on all of it (or whether anyone can be). I'd be a lot more comfortable trusting a book like this if it were written by a group of authors with different areas of expertise.

Looking at what I can find about the book's coverage of CSS (which I know a lot about), I'm not optimistic. He seems to make up his own terminology, which can cause significant confusion in any public discussions. He uses the word "attributes" instead of "properties" (e.g., the CSS 'position' property) in the sample chapter available at O'Reilly. This is a mistake that's become very common these days, perhaps due to earlier editions of this book, and causes lots of confusion when people really need to discuss attributes (in HTML). The table of contents also shows sections titled by terms that he seems to have made up: "Common Subgroup Selectors" and "Advanced Subgroup Selectors".

It could be that he's decided he doesn't like the terminology used by the CSS specification so he's making new terminology. Such a decision has significant costs for communication between and among web developers and standards organizations. However, I fear it may not even be a conscious decision, but rather than he just doesn't know enough about CSS to know the correct terminology. (Not that I would expect any one person to be able to learn enough about all the topics covered in this book to be an authority on all of them.)

(If you want a good book on CSS, look for Eric Meyer's books on CSS, one of which is also published by O'Reilly.)

Definitive Reference?

[skitz0]

Then why did it need a second edition?

Justified trolling

[mailuefterl]

You're dead right here and your trolling is absolutely justified. I've been in the business for years and the best book can't replace a fair deal of experience. You've got to make your share of mistakes to learn how to do right.

Don't click on Slashdots book link

[Anonymous Coward]

bn.com has the book for $47.96. Amazon has it for $41.97

Save yourself some money!

Re:Don't click on Slashdots book link

[devleopard]

Don't click on the above Amazon link either. Amazon is well known for their abusive business practices, and the link is for the poster's affiliate program. Instead, use Bookpool - $36.50 there.

Re:Don't click on Slashdots book link

[bigmouth_strikes]

So how would clicking that link benefit Amazon ? If we don't like them, isn't it good we use their bandwidth and servers ?

Danny Goodman as a web guru

[CodeShark]

Although I don't have the 2nd edition yet, let me add a recommendation for anyone looking to learn or improve their coding and browswer scripting capabilities: Danny Goodman is one of the two authors whose books and sites are my "backbone" and reference points for all things Javascript and HTML/DHTML, the other being Laura Lemay. [Note: be nice to Laura and don't drop the /. effect on her web site -- copy the link or wait a bit and look it up later when the ravening /. hordes have moved on.]

Other authors may do more for back end programming in your specific back end platforms and tools of choice, but you won't do much better than these two for front end browser programming.

Re:Danny Goodman as a web guru

[TreeKiller]

FWIW, I hvan't written any of my HMTL books since about 1997. Denise Tyler first and now Rafe Colburn deserve the credit for maintaining the books up to this point. www.lne.com/Web, on the other hand, is disgustingly out of date and on the slowest web connection in the world, and that is entirely my fault (guilty expression).

Danny Goodman deserves all praise. His books are all great.

-LL

Re:Little market for this book....

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit! You obviously never used a web application before. Sites that go beyond "here's cute pics of my kitties" need DHTML in order to be able to do anything useful.

Yeah, the powers unleashed can be used for evil, but to say that DHTML is useful only for ads or frivolous uses only reveals an abysmal grasp of the real world (er, web).

HTML...in hard copy?!?

[natron 2.0]

I still have yet to understand this. Why would anyone whant to fork out the money for an HTML book when there is so many resources on this topic online. I guess some people still prefer the good 'ol hard copy.

Intranets, not internet

[mccalli]

DHTML is used extensively for in-house custom development. I can assure you that DHTML is used for an awful lot more than ads, though that may well be all you see of it on the public internet.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Little market for this book....

[CaptDeuce]

First off, the article misleads you into believing that there are only four or five web browsers. The truth is, there is only one--Internet Explorer.

Really? Let's find out. Everyone out there who is not using Internet Explorer, raise your mouse hand.

[Earth's orbit changes infinitesimally]

Thank you

Just an above average book

[Anonymous Coward]

A "10"! Wow!

Oh wait. It's just one measly point above the standard "9".

An above average book, I'd say.

Re:Little market for this book....

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

Secondly, there's almost no reason for any web designers to know DHTML because they should be making web sites easily accessible and easy to navigate, of course with content and information, instead of worrying about making a graphic float and fly around the screen.

DHTML, properly used, can improve usability. DHTML can provide some really handy menu features and the ability to show/hide/change/highlight information can be very effective. The MSDN library does a good job with this stuff, while not overdoing it.

Yes, DHTML can be abused and will be by marketing types (Flash is even more abused). But that doesn't mean that DHTML is not useful. The problem with using DHTML is that it is not very cross-browser friendly. As you said, though, there is only one real browser - IE. I wouldn't go that far, but in a corporate intranet, where you control the browser version, DHTML is great for creating web-based apps with a lot of functionality. And you don't have much need for ads there.

DHTML in Mozilla?

[ceswiedler]

I'm not a web developer, but I've heard that DHTML support in Mozilla is pretty bad. There are a few sites which either don't work at all in Mozilla, or have "static" versions with DHTML removed*. Some of the web developers around my office have complained about this, and cite IE's DHTML support as the best.

Is this an issue of actual support, or just "IE standards" where people don't want to use real standards, just whatever "standard" Microsoft supports?

* The site I'm thinking of is Citibank's credit card management section. here. Of course, if you don't have a card with them, you can't log in to check it out.

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[veddermatic]

this is a result of people confusing Micro$fot with the W3C.

IE supports both the "right" way and an M$ only way of doing things.

So it's quite easy to write one set of code that ie5+ and Mozilla use to dothe same thing. However, thanks to certain organizations promoting the other way of doing things, some web devs write code that only works in IE.... which then perpetuates taht "all other browsers but IE suck" because "wow, look how good it works in IE but it breaks in _____."

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[xutopia]

I develop DHTML applications for a living (never read a book by Goodman either lol) and I find Mozilla to actually be superior to IE when it comes to DHTML.

The problem is that many people use the DOM that Internet explorer has or mixes up old Netscape 4 DOM in Netscape 6/Mozilla instead of the standard set by the W3C. Try putting a honda key in a ford see if that works.

Truth is if you stick to w3c standards Internet Explorer gives you headaches.

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[Jugalator]

I'm not a web developer, but I've heard that DHTML support in Mozilla is pretty bad

Not as long as you follow the current standards (DOM). If you do that, both IE and Mozilla has rather good "DHTML" support. It's funny that there's a way to write decent cross-browser pages that's dynamic and all that and that this way is even standardized, while many web developers *still* refuse to realize facts and continues to struggle with Microsoft's document.all model, having to disable parts of pages to make them cross-browser, etc. Is it lack of education? Brainwashing? :-)

The site I'm thinking of is Citibank's credit card management section

Yeah, and just by looking at the source code at their login screen I see tons of non-standard DHTML code so it's no surprise it isn't working well at other browsers than IE.

I'm talking about this:

if ((frm.USERNAME.value == "") || (frm.PASSWORD.value == ""))
{
alert("Please enter your User ID and Password to sign on");
frm.USERNAME.focus();
return (false);
}

See that frm.USERNAME rubbish?
If they had just changed that fragment to this:

var usr = document.getElementById("USERNAME");
var pwd = document.getElementById("PASSWORD");

if ((usr.value == "") || (pwd.value == ""))
{
alert("Please enter your User ID and Password to sign on");
usr.focus();
return false;
}

.. and it might have worked a lot better on Mozilla (while still maintaining 100% compatibility with IE! *gasp*). Look above at the incredible effort spent too.

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[shakah]

Haven't you found things like dynamically loading OPTIONs into SELECT elements to be slower in Mozilla than in IE?

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

No but try dynamically adding options from popup window to a select in the opener through W3C DOM standards. It works flawlessly on Mozilla but IE crashes (It's doesn't just not work, it crashes).

I know it's a very unique case but a good example for people saying Mozilla sucks for DHTML.

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

W3C DOM1:

Interface HTMLFormElement

The FORM element encompasses behavior similar to a collection and an element. It provides direct access to the contained input elements as well as the attributes of the form element

And even if that doesn't cover the case you list, it's perfectly valid Netscape 3-style JavaScript that will be supported Now and Forever in all browsers.

Nothing worse than a web nazi when he's up his own ass. Finding a better example of vendor-specific DOM code should be easy.

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

last I checked, Mozilla (and Netscape 3.0) supported named elements as function parameters in javascript.

the code snippet you posted is in this function:

function validate(frm) {

and is called here:

while I don't remember if 'this' is supported by NS3.0, it is definitely okay for NS4 and Mozilla.

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[Jugalator]

> The FORM element encompasses behavior similar
> to a collection and an element. It provides
> direct access to the contained input elements
> as well as the attributes of the form element

That just sounds like form.containedElement is ok. What I was going for is that "form" where "form" is the ID of a tag isn't part of the DOM standard. That's where getElementById comes into play.

> Finding a better example of vendor-specific
> DOM code should be easy.

Yes, I admit I didn't try hard since the general look of the code wasn't pleasant. Go ahead and give us a better example if you wish instead of:

> Nothing worse than a web nazi when he's up his
> own ass.

:-P

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[Jugalator]

while I don't remember if 'this' is supported by NS3.0, it is definitely okay for NS4 and Mozilla.

Aah, oops, missed that. :-) I just thought they used it like any other tag id reference like if you have an IMG tag with the ID myId and later referencing it in the script as just "myId" as in "myId.style". Since I think that's some kind of shorthand form invented by Microsoft and what I was trying to say. :-P

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

> IE supports both the "right" way and an M$ only way of doing things.

Gee wiz, I guess ya better stop using XUL then. Or anything a third party committee didn't tell you was okay to use.

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[scrytch]

frm.USERNAME ... vs: document.getElementById("USERNAME") ... gee wiz, can I have MORE functions to be required to use, with no apparent benefit?

Plus, your example is simply wrong. getElementByID scans the "id" attribute, not the name attribute, the latter being a necessary part of a form element. There's often multiple forms on a page that have elements with the same name (search forms with multiple search methods, for example). Basically, you need XPath to return a useful node with minimal syntax for scanning, and while I love the hell out of xpath, it isn't well supported because it's brand spanking new in DOM.

So you want people to use more syntax with less functionality to do the exact same thing. Huh.

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[kubrick]

So you want people to use more syntax with less functionality to do the exact same thing. Huh.

Whether or not it makes sense to you, it's the W3C standard, so I'd say you should hold your nose and follow it.

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

you're a tool.

i havent even seen the code but i'd be willing to bet higher up in the page's code you'll see
"var frm = document.a" and the form is named "a"

This frm.USERNAME "rubbish" is simply using a way to avoid having to type "document.a" every time. It's pretty standard stuff.

Using getElementById is going to give you trouble in one of the version 4 browsers. You can figure out which one.

There are a ton of non-standard examples out there - you just didnt happen to pick one. Nice going.

Maybe you should spend less time acting like you know it all and a little more time learning how and why things are done on the client side.

So get off your high horse and get on a clue horse.

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your example doesn't use "form", it uses "frm", which is clearly an object reference, although you clipped the context.

My guess is that the code looks like this:

<script>
function validate(frm) { // your example here
}
</script>
<form onsubmit="javascript:validate(this)">

Which is all perfectly legal, junior. I'm sure the book being reviewed covers it, maybe you should buy it.

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

List some examples, karmawhore.

Here's an example of Mozilla's suckyness

Netscape 6/7 is currently driving me batty because you can't reliably change the style.display attribute on table rows. This bug has been in bugzilla for literally YEARS.

Well it turns out you can, but you have to use a non-standard undocumented vendor extention nutscrapism. Some fucking W3C solution Mozilla is.

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could also use document.getElementsByName() and then look at the .form.name property of each element. Beats using XPath. (That's why the example he listed got the form reference passed into the function.)

If the guy you replied to knew what he was talking about, he would have suggested using frm.elements("name"), which is slightly superior to the given syntax because the name is given as data rather than a property. But whatever.

The irony of his post is that assuming that Id = Name when missing from the tag is probably an IEism.

Re:DHTML in Mozilla?

[Zontar The Mindless]

> ...you have to use a non-standard undocumented vendor extention nutscrapism.

WRONG.

> Some fucking W3C solution Mozilla is.

Indeed it is. :) Try this in NS 6/7 or Moz, where your table-row element has the ID "myTR":

var trEl = document.getElementById("myTR");

I've grown weary of you, table row -- please go away:

trEl.style.display = "none";

Come back, my little lost table row, come back!

trEl.style.display = "table-row";

Required reading: CSS-2: 17.2 The CSS table model. Mozilla does it by the book.

My DHTML book, FREE (full text in post):

[veddermatic]

Chapter 1

Don't use DHTML. It's pain in the ass. If you want "cool" stuff that makes Web sites non-accessable, use Flash. You only have to write one set of code then.

Re:My DHTML book, FREE (full text in post):

[Anonymous Coward]

every day I pray to the Internet god to protect me from Flash people who think they are developers.

interestingly, I'm collecting stats on one of our flash sites: 27% of people bail before the flash loads. That's AFTER they slimmed it down to a 15 second load. 27% of viewers lost. Sales dropped almost 50% over the previous html site.

The only reason there's as much Flash out there as there is is because the creative people totally lie to customers to convince them to use flash because flash is more fun to work on, making all those cool (and to the viewer, completely pointless & annoying) animations etc.

Re:My DHTML book, FREE (full text in post):

[veddermatic]

I pray to protect myself from marketing people who think they are developers. =)

Flash done right is a good thing... meaning, if it's used when it IMPROVES a site's functionality / helps it meet it purpose. Belive it or not, that *can* happen. Unfortunately, you have to wade through the 103298489 "Skip Intro" pieces of crap out there to find a good one....

Problem is, Flash is so easy to use, any idiot can make stuff in it... the other problem is, Marketing folks like stuff that's shiny and blinks... and THEY are the ones the usually makes decisions on what makes it to the homepage.... =(

Section 508 Link

[BShive]

Looks like /. junked my link on Section 508 in the previous post.

Complexity

[Anonymous Coward]

"Let's face it: web development is not as complex as most software engineering or systems development tasks"

You obviously never had to cope with developing a complex web application. When done right, it's a task far more complex than "conventional" software engineering.

Rich client-side interface doesn't mean a mouse-cursor tracker or validating your form on the client-side. It means letting the client side do ALL your application logic and interface, seperately. And let the server do the dumb job of validating, saving and returning raw data that can be handled by client-side custom components or logic-flow.

Not as complex? No, even more complex, if you're doing anything worthy.

Re:Complexity

[SCHecklerX]

Sounds like you should just write a client then. DHTML misses the whole point of using a web interface in the first place -- all clients being able to use the web. None of my pages depend on DHTML, but they may use it here and there, but it is never a requirement just to use the fscking site. It really pisses me off that places like the Pennsylvania government, of all entities, rely on client-side processing or don't work at all.

Re:Complexity

[Anonymous Coward]

"Let's face it: web development is not as complex as most software engineering or systems development tasks"

You obviously never had to cope with developing a complex web application. When done right, it's a task far more complex than "conventional" software engineering.

You've obviously never had to cope with developing a complex "conventional" application.

Take the browser, say, that's acting as the platform for your "web application"...

Re:Complexity

[Anonymous Coward]

How does that contradict the point?

If two applications, with equal requirements and identical interfaces, were to be developed. One using "converntional software engineering" and one based on web technologies such as CSS/JS/DOM, it would be possible, but more complex to achieve the task with the latter.

"Take the browser, say, that's acting as the platform for your "web application"..."

Are you suggesting that the platform is always more complex than the program that was created using it? Because that's simply wrong in many cases.

Re:Complexity

[DavyByrne]

Rich client-side interface ... means letting the client side do ALL your application logic and interface, seperately. And let the server do the dumb job of validating, saving and returning raw data that can be handled by client-side custom components or logic-flow.

Thank you for warning us against hiring you or your company to build Web applications.

You want to put ALL your application logic on the client side? You're kidding, right? A bit limiting, don't you think? How about designing applications for scalability and extensibility? How about taking advantage of the collective wisdom of software engineers and applying some common design patterns to properly separate concerns and distribute responsibilities across appropriate application layers?

No wonder you think the client side is so complex. You have no concept of how to design an application.

Re:Complexity

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only limiting if you don't really know the limits of the platform.

Designing a thick client does not undermine scalability and extensibility in any way. Common design patterns can be applied on the client-side just like they can be applied on the server-side. The same applies to applications layers, only both your logic and presentation layers are implemented on the client-side.

And it wasn't said that it's "so complex", it was said that it's more complex than designing the same application using conventional tools. But I'm sure that changing the context of the sentence served your purpose properly.

I wouldn't want to work with someone who doesn't understand the importance of good and rich client-side programming. Thank YOU for the warning.

Re:Complexity

[jgerman]

Uhh, try again. It's no where near as complex as conventional software engineering. Although I guess a case can be made for that argument since you aren't using any real languages. Re-write gcc, or the Linux kernel, or do real network programming, these are all conventional software engineering tasks. Web Programming is a misnomer. Web scripting is about all it really is. HTML is NOT a programming language, it is a markup language. JavaScript is NOT a programming language, it is a scripting language.

Re:Complexity

[0xdeadbeef]

Not as complex? No, even more complex, if you're doing anything worthy.

And as we all know, complexity has been measured to show a correlation with the author's dick size.

Re:Complexity

[Anonymous Coward]

Scheesh.

What difference does it make whether it is a scripting langauge or not?

All the same software engineering principles still apply. Or do you think there is something special about compiling code?

Re:Complexity

[bgibby9]

HTML is not a language but scripting languages are classified as programming languages.

Here is a clip from www.dictionary.com

programming language

n : (computer science) a language designed for programming computers [syn: programing language]
Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University

programming language

A formal language in which computer programs are written. The definition of a particular language consists of both syntax (how the various symbols of the language may be combined) and semantics (the meaning of the language constructs).

Languages are classified as low level if they are close to machine code and high level if each language statement corresponds to many machine code instructions (though this could also apply to a low level language with extensive use of macros, in which case it would be debatable whether it still counted as low level). A roughly parallel classification is the description as first generation language through to fifth generation language.

Another major distinction is between imperative languages and declarative languages.

(1995-04-06)
Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2001 Denis Howe

Re:Complexity

[Anonymous Coward]

You pompous, ignorant dick.

Re:Complexity

[jgerman]

Well barring that it's from dictionary.com which isn't entirely accurate. HTML is 1) not a scripting language, it's a markup language, an d2) web pages are not programs. I'm not knocking it, I wasn't trying to insult web developers, just pointing out that web "programming" while it is getting more sophisticated, does not involve nearly the complexity of what the original author called "conventional" engineering.

Don't be an idiot

[ShieldW0lf]

Anyone who develops sites for corporates is going to be using DHTML to make it appealing and easy to use. I develop internet apps for a living, and I use DHTML all over the place in my development. You can make some VERY effective user interfaces with DHTML... I've used it in my sites to create extremely flexible/dynamic forms that pass sophisticated information in a single form that would require 5-6 round trips to the server without it. You quite obviously have no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps you should stop spewing crap and learn a little about the subject before you mouth off.

Re:Don't be an idiot

[pmz]

Anyone who develops sites for corporates is going to be using DHTML to make it appealing and easy to use.

What if one of the users is blind or can't use a mouse, but, otherwise, is a perfectly competent and valuable employee? Would you suggest this person be dismissed as human scrap just because you like to make everything "appealing and easy to use"?

Re:Don't be an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who develops sites for corporates is going to be using DHTML to make it appealing and easy to use.

The corporate intranet crap I've seen made usually does use DHTML. Of course, it's also generally unusable, overly complex, and unreliable.

Re:Don't be an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. Why would programmatically updating a select list or providing collapsable text sections turn someone into "human scrap"?

Every f*ing GUI application ever written is "dynamic", and the blind seem to manage fairly well, given that GUIs are designed for people with working eyes.

One could even imagine using DHTML to (gasp) improve blind people's experience by providing better hooks into the actual content.

If you are on some Netscape v.1 Foreva! kick, please don't exploit the disabled.

Re:Don't be an idiot

[pmz]

Why would programmatically updating a select list or providing collapsable text sections turn someone into "human scrap"?

It wouldn't. Even I will admit that there are totally legitimate uses for DHTML. Select lists are self-contained on the web page and updating it behind the scenes isn't a big deal. Form validation and text-field updates are also not a big deal. However, many intranet websites push all this all way too far.

The WWW is really going through an adolesence right now, where very very many web developer simply don't get it. I have seen full-blown GUIs generated in my browser on-the-fly with JavaScript, and these websites (intranet ones, too) were obviously developed with pretty much no regard to anyone who: 1) uses something other than IE, 2) can't move a mouse around to see all the fancy-shmancy pop-ups, dialogs, and menus drawn directly into the browser window. Given that these sites are barely accessible to me (they are annoying as hell), I can't imagine how a person disabled in some manner would deal with them. And this comes back to my original question about intranets not fully accomidating otherwise totally valuable employees. It'll be another several years before the Public really understands what the WWW is about and what it always has been about: information sharing in a platform-agnostic and accessible (both browsers and people) manner.

DHTML vs Server Side scripting

[elliotj]

I'm not trying to troll here, this is an actual question because I don't know.

Is DHTML still as relevant as it used to be? Aren't people using server side scripting (perl, php, asp, etc) for truly interactive sites and things like DHTML are little more than nice HTML enhancements for doing the odd neat thing?

I just wondered what the perception was? I'm not anti-DHTML by any means, I'm just interested in where the general trend of web development is going.

Re:DHTML vs Server Side scripting

[xutopia]

DHTML was relevant when it appeared with the advent of 4.0 browsers and it is even more today because there is more coherance

A truly interactive site will require server side processing of information if it wants to be of any value. DHTML allows you to present information in a way someone can interact with it (sorting a table of data on the client side, form validation, having mutliple layers of information on a page).

DHTML becomes essential in web applications like a billing software that doesn't require software to be installed on the client side.

Something going against the usage of DHTML is the browser war and support for standards still not being as respected as Mozilla. Netscape 4 is the worst thing that happened to DHTML. It made lots of things impossible to do or hard to do. Anyone still using NS4 should upgrade to allow developers to create real web sites. Another thing going against DHTML is the fact that lots of people begin programming with it and too many beginners try useless flashy things that hurt the people that can actually do nice things in DHTML.

The last web application I did for www.b-process.com processes bills eletronically and uses a web interface compatible with IE4 and up and Mozilla/NS6+. Lots of features like attaching a note to a bill are achieved through the usage of DHTML. Another interesting thing was that we save download time by sending only bill data instead and let the DHTML layer format the information on the client side saving up to 80% of bandwith.

DHTML is relevant today and will be more once NS4 is dropped completely. I'm glad I could answer your question! :)

Re:DHTML vs Server Side scripting

[sapgau]

DHTML is still important if you want to minimize communication with the server and offer a quick response to the user. Things like validation, updating icons, dynamic pick lists, dynamic tables, etc. are all prefered to be done by the browser. Unless your site will be hosted on a small LAN, you need all the speed you can get, connection wise.

Re:DHTML vs Server Side scripting

[ShieldW0lf]

DHTML is particularly relevant, in my experience, with generating dynamic forms.

As an example, I've recently created a page that allows the creation of price structures. Price structures have a start date, an end date (which may be null), 0 or more surcharges (name and $)and 1 or more price breaks (min qty, max qty, unit cost). Also, each price break may have 0 or more surcharges (name and $)

Building this with static HTML and server side scripting could require many trips back and forth to the server... this isn't very good from a users perspective.

Instead, I used dynamic HTML to do it all in one page... the form is created on the fly, and modal dialogs are used when entering data to keep the interface clean. Clicking a button to add a price break opens a modal, fetches the details back from the modal, creates another table row, fills it with text showing what you've added, hidden input fields holding the data, an "add surcharge" button, and a "remove" button that deletes the table row (along with the hidden inputs it contains)

You can easily add, edit and remove as many items from this form as you wish, and once you've tweaked the price structure the way you want it, the server breaks it all down and salts it away in the database.

The whole thing is very usable, reusable, and efficient, and could not have been made without DHTML and JavaScript.

Re:DHTML vs Server Side scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a tradeoff though. With extra inforamtion about validation (and other dynamic stuff), the pages become heavy (and unmaintable at times). It just appears *somewhat* user friendly at times.

Personally, I prefer server side scripting (of course Tomcat). And for large projects you can't ignore the benefits of server side scripting. KISS formula man.

Re:DHTML vs Server Side scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone still using NS4 should upgrade to allow developers to create real web sites.

As opposed to all those fake websites that existed before all the "web designers" bought their copies of FrontPage, Dreamweaver, and Flash?

I still remember when Dreamweaver came out. Ugh. One of the first tools to dissect images into zillions of little annoying invisible-table aligned tiles.

Re:DHTML vs Server Side scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape 4 is the worst thing that happened to DHTML. It made lots of things impossible to do or hard to do. Anyone still using NS4 should upgrade to allow developers to create real web sites."

Yes an no. Arguably, Mozilla is the worst thing that happened to web developers. No, this is not a troll or flaimbait. This is the perspective of a real live *employed* web developer.

Netscape 4 sucked. No question. It sucked so bad that I had to write two versions of my scripts sometimes just to make a table work correctly. It was (and, I regret to say, still is) terrible.

So how is a fully standards compliant browser, the answer to my prayers, hopes, and dreams the worst thing that could happen to me? Easy: It doesn't support all the old NS4 rubbish that I had to code into my pages because idiots still use the browser (yes, take offense, please. Then go upgrade your browser) I have literally had to recode almost 1,000 pages to incorporate yet another version of Netscape into my code... which was *expensive* to say the least.

And the NS6/Mozilla crowd has the NERVE to condescend to me for not using standards compliant code? I ask, what was I supposed to do? It was *your* crappy browser.

And the worst part is that even if I wanted to, I couldn't go back and recode my sites to be "standards compliant" because all the NS4 users are FIERCLY loyal and won't upgrade even to the new version of Netscape (which is amazing and I use it as my primary browser, btw).

I don't code for MSIE. I don't code for Netscape. And I don't use the standards. I can't do any of that. I have to, using my experience and a few handy tips from books like this one code for what *actually* works.

And to whomever said webdev isn't "real coding"... get a clue. Your job is going away. It'll be my job in another few years... At least if M$ has their way.

Re:DHTML vs Server Side scripting

[pmz]

The whole thing is very usable, reusable, and efficient, and could not have been made without DHTML and JavaScript.

Does this site require Internet Explorer, or is the DHTML organized to work with other JavaScript/DOM enabled browsers?

Re:DHTML vs Server Side scripting

[doom]

It doesn't support all the old NS4 rubbish that I had to code into my pages because idiots still use the browser (yes, take offense, please. Then go upgrade your browser)

Here we have a fine example of a fellow who thinks that the customers are supposed to jump through hoops to make his life easier.

You'll need to live with NS4 users for another few years most likely. In the meantime, might I suggest KISS?

(This message posted with lynx, by the way.)

Re:Little market for this book....

[octover]

I am a web developer, and I am interested in looking into this book further. Granted I am most concerned with how IE renders the pages I create, I'm not happy until Mozilla is rendering it right as well. This is important because Apple hired the guy doing Chimera, soon all those mac kids will be browsing with a gecko rendering engine.

All the stuff the version 4 browsers promised is finally becoming reality I can more than experiment with. Also your assertion that developers should spend more time making sites accessible is true. It is still possible to have DHTML and still be accessible, it all depends on the developer and how educated they are in their field. I agree that in most cases the use of DHTML/JavaScript is insane concerning advertising crap. Your belief that DHTML's only application is advertising on the web is crap. There are at least of few of us using it to enrich the user experience. For example forms are probably benefit the most from DHTML and JavaScript. You can have a dynamic changing form that can do a lot of first level data validation without having to submit the form over and over.

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[Anonymous Coward]

Are people *still* pushing DHTML? Any standard that incorporates client-side JavaScript sounds like a bad idea to me. Client-side JavaScript is a pain to implement and has high maintenance costs.

You get plenty of bang for your buck with HTML or XHTML with CSS. If you need business rules, stick 'em on the server.

And don't waste time learning JavaScript! Your time is better spent learning PHP, Java, Python, you name it. You can't use JavaScript anywhere else.

-Ed

you're so FUCKING wrong.

[amarodeeps]

At the present moment I'm working on a cross-platform dhtml navigation for an educational institution (a really big famous one, you've heard of it). It's well and fine for you to decide that 'dhtml is used mostly for advertisements' but that just doesn't play itself out in the real world, where I live and work as a web developer. At the school that I'm doing this project for, they decide these things by committee (which is a pain in the ass, but that's how it's done...) and the committee decided they needed a cross-platform (for accessibility) dhtml (for their idea of usability as well as some "coolness" factor, I think) menu.

Perhaps if I had been able to choose, I would not have chosen a dhtml menu. Personally, I hate dealing with java^H^H^H^Hecmascript and the dom of various different browsers, but hey, I didn't choose. I am being paid to do this. So, I stole some script from the web, read it through, and customized it. Danny's first edition of _Dynamic HTML_ was invaluable in this endeavor, even being as old as it is.

So, let me reiterate: in the real world, where people are paid to do things for other people (we call it a _job_) books like this are actually useful! Go figure!

Re:you're so FUCKING wrong.

[a3d0a3m]

In the real world, a committee would just hire a web design firm, and not be bothered with the intricate details of their site. accessability is one thing to mention, but dhtml is just a stupid arbitrary thing to require. Are you over the age of 17 young man? You sound like you are designing a site for your highschool :)

adam

Re:you're so FUCKING wrong.

[amarodeeps]

In the real world, a committee would just hire a web design firm, and not be bothered with the intricate details of their site. accessability is one thing to mention, but dhtml is just a stupid arbitrary thing to require.

No, listen: an educational institution. You are thinking of a business where these decisions come down to one person saying: "we'll hire a design firm," or "we'll move this in house to (hopefully) save costs."--which does, BTW, happen...not everyone thinks contracting out is the best idea. In this case, at the place that I'm talking about, they are trying to budget as cheaply as possible (this is the _real_ world, remember!) and they don't want to pay a design firm to do it when they can do it (as much as possible) themselves, and save. There are a lot of departments which have some say, like IT and admissions and marketing. And they want it to look cool, so they got some DHTML--which, by the way, a lot of places use (ever seen a mouse over? How many sites have them? Uh...). I'm just following along. But why am I explaining this to you? You're just an insulting fool who's apparently never seen the inside of a college or university.

Are you over the age of 17 young man? You sound like you are designing a site for your highschool :)

Did I say I was designing a site? No. Implicit in my comment was that I had _not_ designed the site, someone else had. I explicitly said that I don't like working with DHTML. Learn to read, and watch what you say.

Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[jmichaelg]

If I can't see a site without scripting enabled, I am not going to look at that site. Period.

I use IE6 to cruise the web. Given the all the security holes and patches, I'll be damned if I say yes to "Scripts are usually hamless. Ok to run?"

Even a site like the NYtimes runs under lockdown on my machine. Though I trust the web designers at the Times not to be malicious, I don't think they can secure their site against an attack that sneaks a malicious script onto their site. Same thing is true of internal web pages.

Re:Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely.
That's why I don't open emails, or run any sort of filesharing on any system at all, or run Windows, for instance. There are just too many unknowns. And running a program or script that I haven't personally reviewed? Fuck it. I try to write everything from scratch, so I *know* it works. That includes the compiler - who knows what sort of nasties may be lurking?

The point is - if you want to set your personal "security limits" at javascript, that's cool, but that hardly makes you a security god.

Re:Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[a3d0a3m]

Do you also cross the street with knee pads, wrist guards, and a crash helmet?

adam

Re:Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[Kombat]

If I can't see a site without scripting enabled, I am not going to look at that site. Period.

Wow, well it's good to see that you're very progressive and open-minded. Why don't you try broadening your scope a bit? Sure, no one needs Java, Javascript, Flash, CSS, or DHTML to punch up a few news stories or your resume. But what about sites that let you dynamically monitor distributed processes? Or how about a little thing you've obviously never heard of called "e-commerce?" There are plenty of real, useful ways in which scripting makes things a lot easier, both for the visitor and the author.

It says a lot that you couldn't see that. Period.

Re:Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[Anonymous Coward]

You browse the Web with IE and you're concerned about security?

Re:Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[jmichaelg]

Why don't you try broadening your scope a bit?

Well I used to run with all the bells and whistles enabled. Unfortunately, I stumbled across a website whose author was more interested in causing havoc on my machine than in providing content.

It's true that well-intentioned scripting features can make things easier. It's also true that, in the wrong hands, those features can cause havoc. To me, it's not worth it.

As to your last comment, E-commerce doesn't require DHTML, Flash, CSS, java or javascript. In fact, if you ever read the W3 specs, they make a point of saying that web sites shouldn't require any of those technologies to function properly. If you want animated pictures of butterfly-costumed men obscuring your screen, be my guest. Just don't insist that I watch them too.

Re:Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found that running no scripts, high security has been the best way to learn all of the HTML/Javascript/etc tricks present in most of the "modern" webpages. For me, it's a two fold plus: learning new things and no popup/under/over/through ads to distract me. It's the rare site that I've been unable to mentally parse the code (go try to get tech support from Novell sometime w/o Javascript)

Just my $.02

Re:Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[S.O.B.]

I use IE6 to cruise the web. Given the all the security holes and patches, I'll be damned if I say yes to "Scripts are usually hamless. Ok to run?"

Maybe you should try using a browser that doesn't have so many security problems. I suppose if the lock on your door was easy to pick then you would get rid of your possessions rather then getting a better lock.

The scripts are not the problem. IE is the problem.

Re:Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[Anonymous Coward]

"There are plenty of real, useful ways in which scripting makes things a lot easier, both for the *visitor* and the author."

Really? Please name one. I've never heard of a single compelling use which I considered as beneficial to me as a visitor to a script-requiring webpage.

Re:Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[Kombat]

Really? Please name one. I've never heard of a single compelling use which I considered as beneficial to me as a visitor to a script-requiring webpage.

Large menus. By implementing them as a dynamic, client-side tree control, very large document structures can be displayed in a very compressed space, reducing client-server communications, and allowing the user to navigate directly to the topic they're interested in, in a much large pool than would otherwise be possible (practical) without scripting.

Re:Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be foolish. Your statement says more about you than the technology. Client-side scripting is great for some tasks that could only be done otherwise with multiple visits to the web server. Or perhaps you prefer slow, laggy applications?

Re:Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[Anonymous Coward]

What surfer cares about demands on the server? That's not our problem. Fuck scripting, fuck client-side caching, etc. If the technology isn't mature enough to permit frequent calls to the server, why is that my problem? Take your client-side scripting and shove it. Repair lags elsewhere, by other means. Javascripting and other client-side scripting are surfer-disrespectful kludges and the standards should never have been approved/adopted. Got it?

Re:Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, surfers hate slow sites. Part of the solution would be to avoid long, laggy, slow calls to the server by doing as much work as possible on the client side. After all, does the server really need to be involved to determine if the value in field x is an integer or an alpha?

Please - try to keep up with this Internet thing. It just may be significant someday.

Re:Klez me once, shame on you. Klez me twice....

[pmz]

But what about sites that let you dynamically monitor distributed processes?

What do application-specific used-by-ten-people websites have to do with the WWW? The WWW is intended to be public and accessible, just like the public library or a local department store. Would you go to a store that denied you access because of the brand of shoes you happend to be wearing (even though shoes are a standard interface used in moving about the store)? What if you need to use an elevator but the only way to the second floor is a spinning neon escalator?

Or how about a little thing you've obviously never heard of called "e-commerce?"

The absolute best e-commerce sites are very light on DHTML. They follow a "Just the facts, Mam" philosophy of well-organized data entry (forms) and an intuitive work flow from beginning to end. They don't need DHTML for efficiently browsing catalogs, nor do they need DHTML for data entry, nor do they need DHTML for actually performing the transaction.

Re:Little market for this book....

[bigmouth_strikes]

You obvisouly don't know what you are talking about.

Well-used Javascript and DHTML is harder to recognize than the obvious stuff you come across as popups and various ad-schemes. Apparently, you pull stats ("99.9999%") out of your ass and try to pass your opinions as facts. Are you in the industry, or is your main experience that as a surfer ?

There is tremendous power to DHTML and Javascript, and it is widely used in commercial sites. It allows the user to interact with the otherwise dead html in ways that help the user and the site.

For a great example, look at International Herald Tribune. You can select articles from the frontpage and put them in a "clippings" folder - no you don't have to login - and then you can read them all later on. No more "open in a new window". For individual articles you can select how it will presented; font size, colums per page etc. This is an example of a site that is usable and intuitive thanks to Javascript, in this case.

So, get a clue to what you are talking about.

just take all my money

[Minn_Kota_Marine]

nice associates ID, why don't you just put a link to your paypal account monkey fucker?

Re:just take all my money

[BShive]

Erm so? I threw it in there after contributing to the discussion, not just trolling for clicks like your friends out there. Besides,it doesn't cost you anything.

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[jwinter1]

Hey, I agree with you, right up until you say that:

You can't use JavaScript anywhere else.

Mozilla's application interface uses JavaScript extensively and seems to be a very cool way to get cross-platform compatibility. But I hate JavaScript in web pages too.

Why this book?

[avdi]

First of all, what is DHTML? Why not just call it "Scripting CSS and DOM with ECMAScript"? Calling it DHTML is confusing, because it makes it sound like a seperate version of HTML.

Honest question: there seems to be a lot of overlap between this book and other O'Reilly titles. Can anyone tell me why I would want this one rather than "HTML/XHTML, The Definitive Reference" and/or "Javascript, the Definitve Reference"?

UI? We don't need no stinkin' UI!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the sound of someone sorting a list of items without client-side javascript...

click (wait)... click (wait)... click(wait)...

One example of thousands of times where client-side scripting is useful. Is server-side scripting more useful? Certainly. Should server-side scripting be learned first? Probably. But any web developer that isn't familiar with client-side scripting is a mediocre web developer.

If this is the second edition....

[PinkX]

Then the first one wasn't THAT definitive!!

Re:If this is the second edition....

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Then the first one wasn't THAT definitive!!
No, it's not that, it's that the precognizant first edition didn't want to violate the space-time continuum, so it made itself only definitive to what was then the present state of DHTML.

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need business rules, stick 'em on the server

Suppose you want to process keypress events in a form input, to provide a character count. You're going to bang on your server for each one? Wow, that's really really stupid.

Oh, your alternative is to provide no extra functionality like that in any of your web applications? Ok, thanks for playing, but you lose.

Your time is better spent learning PHP, Java, Python, you name it. You can't use JavaScript anywhere else.

You can use PHP for web page scripting, and not "anywhere else". What's your point?

from 4, Interesting to 0, Flamebait

[xintegerx]

Yes, half the slashdot population could indeed be using a browser that is not IE. However, 99% are not, so making DHTML compatible for other browsers should be the least of a web developer's concerns. Content and navigation should come first.

I agree. I guess DHTML and JavaScript have excellent tools for intranets, for instance for services like accessing Novell GropWise through the web browser. I think you're right, that there are good uses for DHTML.

I don't mind useful applications, but it seems that the internet is more annoying now it was in 1996 and DHTML is one of the reasons no doubt. It does have good purposes, but no thank you 99% of the time, when I'm accessing the internet and not intranets. :)

Thank you to people who enlightened us all about intranet usefulness. I posted my opinion, it went to 4, Interesting, and generated a few explanations of how DHTML is useful. Now that my perspective had a counterpoint, my moderation quickly went down to zero. I ask, are we not all enlightened from the discussion that took place? How can something that entices useful information be devalued once moderators judge that a 'better' opinion appears, all stemming from this? And flamebait, of all things...

Re:from 4, Interesting to 0, Flamebait

[mccalli]

Thank you to people who enlightened us all about intranet usefulness. I posted my opinion, it went to 4, Interesting, and generated a few explanations of how DHTML is useful.

Well quite. Bit stunned to find you'd gone to zero to be honest - the very number of counterpoints you generated (I posted one) showed that at least some people found it interesting.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:from 4, Interesting to 0, Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody mod this fucker down.

Dynamic Duo

[Bio]

I'm not so up to date what's the current state of the art, but some years ago, when I was applying DHTML, I always found Dan Steinman's Tutorial Dynamic Duo very helpful (thanks Dan!).

It has been continued as DynAPI

Re:Dynamic Duo

[Jugalator]

Too bad that the Dynamic Duo site teach to write special cases for IE4/NS4. What about Mozilla and any Netscape version past 6.0 that has nothing in common with Netscape 4? What about Opera?

Then they have to suggest using something like this:

if (ie4) {
// IE4+ code
} else if (ns4) {
// NS4 code
} else if (ns6) {
// NS6/Moz code
} else if (opera) {
// Opera code
}

Can you see the maintenance you'd need to do to make it cross-browser compatible?

The alternative is DOM where you can use common code for all browsers that support DOM. Considering that the standard has been around for years and is supported rather good by all current browsers, it's surprising that there's enormous amounts of sites around that teach the aging "version 4" coding philosophy. It's the philosophy behind those hideous IE-specific pages that might have *some* Netscape support in but break when you use a browser/browser version the coder didn't expect or didn't exist at the time the page was coded.

Other help

[Laura_007]

Sometimes an even better approach would be to study the code existing out there first, such as the excellent code offered up by exitfuel. One of the most important pieces of code is the window.open function, and onload and onleave of the body element. Once you have them mastered, along with the Document Model of Objects, you have a good grounding for some serious Flash programming. There are some pretty intense workarounds necessary for some of the mechanisms that people have in place nowadays, but it's definitely doable! Good luck!

tag- Why don't most girls like programming?

Re:Little market for this book....

[Jedi Alec]

I wish I could, I really do...but unfortunately people who obviously actually need to read literature like this are still spewing out websites which i cannot view in Mozilla. Examples include, but are not limited to: the intranet at my job, the Windows Update page ;-), but for example also my "I need to host a file for free with no hassle" kinda provider www.0catch.com

Against JavaScript

[Animats]

As web firewalls become more pervasive, in response to more obnoxious JavaScript, more and more JavaScript dreck will be blocked. So pages must again work with JavaScript off. In particular, make sure you can buy using your e-commerce sites with JavaScript off or blocked by a proxy. Never assume your page can force a window to open on the client.

If you want eye candy, use Flash, which does a much better job of it.

Re:Little market for this book....

[aftk2]

You forgot the best part...the clippings jump from where you clicked them toward your menu bar, and are gone from where you originally clipped them! Ugh, I feel a bit of web development envy...

Seriously, it's amazing they not only had the foresight to include this functionality, but also were able to somehow make it intuitive and *gasp* not annoying! When you mention a menu bar following you as you scroll down and clippings that jump across the screen toward it, you run the very real risk of annoying the crap out of your user. The fact that that isn't the case is commendable. (And yes, I verified this worked in IE 5.1 Mac and Mozilla 1.1!) All that, and functionality to boot.

If you have to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

...you'll never know.

Comparison to Flanagan's JavaScript book.

[Kingpin]

Anyone own both? How do they compare to one another?

Re:Comparison to Flanagan's JavaScript book.

[iSwitched]

I don't have the second edition (yet) but I do have the very latest Flannagan - which covers JS 1.5.

I see only a small overlap in the DOM and CSS coverage. Flannagan's book is all javascript beginning to end and covers coding in JS in much greater depth. Frankly, I agree with some posters that to much JavaScript on public web sites is generally a 'bad thing' but I've been developing a web interface to a complex data replication system, where offloading some of the UI-work onto the client can be useful and is generally acceptable -- Flannagan's book has saved my ass over and over.

If you're going to be bringing out a complex web-based application - start with Flannagan and move to DHTML when/if you need to.

For anyone who doesn't know, its JavaScript-The definitive Guide, by David Flannagan.

Re: Troll??? Huh???

[veddermatic]

TROLL?

Funny, sure, Informative, really... why muck around with the various browser compatability issues when even Netscape 4 supports the same Flash plugin that Opera/IE/Mozilla/You Name It supports??

Maybe Danny himself modded me down to boost sales =)

never for public sites

[Anonymous Coward]

How I wish I could use CSS2 positioning instead of table-table-table-in-a-table layout methods we've been using since 95. I understand that for intranet use and 'high design' sites have the freedom to use whatever they want, but it just seems that we're still mired in using our old tricks when we create publicly available sites that we want the world to see. Agree/disagree? How many folks out there are still using age-old methods of table layout tricks, transparent spacer gifs, etc to achieve the layout they need vs. css2 and other d/html tricks?

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[unDiWahn]

Are you crazy? How the hell do you write a pull-down menu that changes based on the user's selection using _only_ PHP? And Java, nice, but good lord it takes forever to initalize on my machine, and has a huge overhead. Same for flash. Great stuff, if you have a huge connection bandwidth.

I'm not trying to say that Javascript is even a _good_ implementation, but in a lot of cases it's neccessary and/or useful.

I find that a PHP/Javascript combination is practically unstoppable. Theres a lot you can do with DHTML that you probably haven't even thought of.

And yes, javascript has no use (that I know of) outside of webpages. Point taken.

Fuck you again, Ralph Whitbeck

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as anonymous to collect your Amazon referrals now, I see. Why haven't you been mod down yet?

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[Krilomir]

Well, you can use PHP with GTK as well...

http://gtk.php.net

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm -- You sound like the guys who invented ASP.NET. Having your HREFs RUNAT="server" all the time only sounds like a good idea when you are on localhost. Now think about the CEO dialing in through your sweet 33.6Kbs RAS system from a hotel somewhere.

And don't waste time learning JavaScript! Your time is better spent learning PHP, Java, Python, you name it. You can't use JavaScript anywhere else.

Or learning PHP/Java/Python enough to dynamically generate your Javascript code/data.

If you're going to spend the money...

[St. Vitus]

...buy the book here, and support stores that protect their customers' privacy.

cheapest price

[draed]

here

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Theres also two projects that add JavaScript to Diablo2
d2jsp and Jed

I've never used jed, but d2jsp is verry easy to use, and comes with a bunch of examples that will work for whatever you need with only minor tweaking.

slightly OT question

[moebius_4d]

Slightly off-topic, but I once visited a web site full of examples of HTML pages that "simulated" having embedded graphics using only straight HTML. Does anyone recognize this who can provide a IRL? I'd google but searching for "html no graphics" or "html graphics" etc. is pretty useless.

(I've been waiting for a topic where this wasn't *totally* off-topic, so please spare me. :)

Thanks in advance.

Re:slightly OT question

[Anonymous Coward]

http://webfx.eae.net/
http://www.tantek.com/

both have some interesting stuff.

Re:slightly OT question

[moebius_4d]

Hi AC, thanks for the links.

The first one looks good, good enough to bookmark. The second doesn't work in Mozilla, so I'm not inclined to follow their advice.

The site I am thinking of, though, is a collection of example pages that people developed using only HTML, even though they appear to use graphics. For example, they even have "pictures" drawn using only HTML.

If anyone recognizes this description, thanks in advance for a link. :)

Moron Advice

[Anonymous Coward]

Nazi's never bombed Pearl Harbor. It was the Japanese that bombed Pearl Harbor.

Re:Moron Advice

[S.O.B.]

The quote was from the movie Animal House. You might want to rent it. If you can leave your mother's basement long enough.

How's the index?

[Anonymous Coward]

The index in the first edition was atrocious. It seems like most every DOM or HTML attribute that you would need to look up weren't indexed.

shouldn't be called dhtml refference

[vitaflo]

I got this book the day it came out. I've been waiting a few years for it, and I haven't been disappointed.

The reason I like the book so much is because it's not soley limited to DHTML. The first couple hundred pages talk about DHTML and it's uses in browsers, etc. All very great writing, but stuff I already know.

The great part about the book is the other 1000+ pages of syntax references for everything, HTML, JS, CSS, DOM, everything. Basically it's a book that tells you everything you can possibly do in a browser, not just DHTML.

I've used it for looking up CSS properties, or HTML attributes, or Javascript functions. I don't know how many times I've thought of and idea of something to do in a browser, looked in the book, and found some method to do it. Sure beats trying to find info on the W3C site.

Best book I've ever owned, bar none.

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[ray-auch]

Wrong. Javascript is supported server-side by MS IIS, Sun One (was chilisoft) ASP and stryon (was halcyon) iASP - wiht the latter two running on a wide range of web servers.

Write your javascript well and you can use the same functions/objects (eg. form validators) on the client and the server.

Nazis?

[brunes69]

Perhaps you should tell your friend to go droll over Josh Harnett some more, since a) He obviously got all he knows about Perl harbour from that awfull movie, and b) He missed the whole "It was the Japenese" idea.

why Yet Another Syntax?

[Tablizer]

What I don't get is why style-sheet commands are not HMTL-based? Why have Yet-Another-Language? We have JavaScript, HTML, that funky style-sheet syntax, and a CGI-based scripting language (Perl, PHP, ASP, etc).

That can make one's head spin. They could have integrated style-sheet syntax into HTML, couldn't they?

Re:why Yet Another Syntax?

[Fweeky]

What I don't get is why style-sheet commands are not HMTL-based? Why have Yet-Another-Language?

CSS was designed to be simple and easy for a human to read and write.

The entire point of CSS was to remove presentational attributed from HTML; moving them to somewhere else in it would be counter-productive. The HTML specification would be bloated significantly, not to mention how messy it would almost certainly be.

CSS is also designed to style arbitary XML documents, not just HTML, so it would have to be generalised; so HTML becomes XML, and before you know it, you've got XSL:FO.

They could have integrated style-sheet syntax into HTML, couldn't they?

They did:

<h1 style="font-family: sans-serif;">Foo</h1>

Not much better than <font>, though.

Re:why Yet Another Syntax?

[Tablizer]

CSS was designed to be simple and easy for a human to read and write.

Gee, thats what they said about HTML also.

The HTML specification would be bloated significantly

That is like saying, "English is too bloated already. Therefore we will write half the document in English and the other half in Spanish."

They did [integrate them]: <h1 style="font-family: sans-serif;">Foo</h1>

No, that is embedding one lang in another.

Re:why Yet Another Syntax?

[Fweeky]

CSS was designed to be simple and easy for a human to read and write.

Gee, thats what they said about HTML also.

I don't recall any such claims. It's certainly not true for markup-heavy tasks such as the specification of a stylesheet, as XSL plainly shows.

The HTML specification would be bloated significantly

That is like saying, "English is too bloated already. Therefore we will write half the document in English and the other half in Spanish."

Well, if you want an analogy to help you understand, it's like saying "Instead of making our range of cars, trucks, busses, lorries, tanks and bikes amphibious in whatever way we can hack into them, let's just build a boat they will all fit into, along with anything else we or others might make in future along the same lines".

If you think it's syntax is what makes CSS "complex", you can't have used it much :)

Re:why Yet Another Syntax?

[Tablizer]

Well, if you want an analogy to help you understand, it's like saying "Instead of making our range of cars, trucks, busses, lorries, tanks and bikes amphibious in whatever way we can hack into them, let's just build a boat they will all fit into, along with anything else we or others might make in future along the same lines".

I don't see how this translates to CSS syntax.

If you think it's syntax is what makes CSS "complex", you can't have used it much

My point is that there is no reason to use two *different* conventions. Is there a flaw somewhere in HTML or XML that made them go another route? Positional parameters perhaps?

Lets all switch it to LISP. It is going that way anyhow, just the hard winding way :-)

Re:why Yet Another Syntax?

[Fweeky]

Well, if you want an analogy to help you understand, it's like saying "Instead of making our range of cars, trucks, busses, lorries, tanks and bikes amphibious in whatever way we can hack into them, let's just build a boat they will all fit into, along with anything else we or others might make in future along the same lines".

I don't see how this translates to CSS syntax.

HTML is one example of an SGML (and now XML) document type which you might want to style. A stylesheet language must be generalised, ergo you can *not* just base it on HTML and let all the other document types do their own thing. Better to make one centralised standard which encompasses them all.

My point is that there is no reason to use two *different* conventions. Is there a flaw somewhere in HTML or XML that made them go another route? Positional parameters perhaps?

The fact that XML didn't exist when CSS level 1 was recommended kinda made it unsuitable, yes :)

HTML is not a standalone language; HTML is an SGML doctype. The only sane way to do what you suggest at the time would be therefore to make a new SGML doctype for CSS.

I imagine this was concidered, but given how complex SGML is and how simple CSS is, it's quite easy to see why it wasn't actually done, especially concidering the quality of the browsers at the time. I'll bet the thought of retargeting speghettified tag-soup parsers to a stylesheet language which really didn't need anything close to a DOM wasn't terribly attractive.

Anyway, it was a good decision, XML or no, XML rapidly turns into a mess of tags which would make the /. garbage filter have a heart attack when you're encoding small chunks of data in it. Imagine, instead of:

body > h1 {
color: red;
background-color: white;
text-decoration: underline;
}

You had:

<ruleset>
<selector><tag>body<child><tag>h1</tag></child></t ag></selector>
<attribute name="color">red</attribute>
<attribute name="background-color">white</attribute>
<attribute name="text-decoration">underline</attribute>
<rul eset>

Now add a prefix to each tag, and extend it a couple of hundred lines, with some rather more complex selectors. Ow.

Re:why Yet Another Syntax?

[Tablizer]

HTML is one example of an SGML (and now XML) document type which you might want to style. A stylesheet language must be generalised, ergo you can *not* just base it on HTML and let all the other document types do their own thing.

But why invent something *totally* different just because there are some slight language conflicts? A total 180 does not make sense just because there are minor issues IMO. Other than positional parameters, which can be fixed, HTML or XML can represent anything CSS can.

Your HTML example is probably more larger than it needs to be. I think you are possibly exaggerating. You could go 'color="red"' instead of Attribute tags, for example.

Re:why Yet Another Syntax?

[Fweeky]

But why invent something *totally* different just because there are some slight language conflicts?

Yes, of course. Every language should use SGML or XML, because readability and redundancy are irrelevent in all cases, especially for simple languages with little data to encode.

Is there any particular reason you're not also asking why JavaScript isn't "HTML based"?

A total 180 does not make sense just because there are minor issues IMO

These "minor issues" with complexity, uglyness, redundancy, parsing rules, etc, are all the exact opposite of CSS's main requirements; to be simple and human readable and writable. I'm very glad the CSS WG does not share your opinion.

Your HTML example is probably more larger than it needs to be. I think you are possibly exaggerating. You could go 'color="red"' instead of Attribute tags, for example.

You're not going to save a significant amount of space by doing that. You could promote the attributes to tags, but then you're making forward compatible parsing difficult. You could make that selector tag into a simple bit of ASCII like CSS used, but then you have to start adding your own custom parsing routines, and it gets even more complex.

If you want any more detail, I suggest you contact the CSS Working Group, or ask on www-style, or something. I'm getting tired of justifying decisions made by other people half a decade ago to someone who's opinion I really should care less about.

Re:why Yet Another Syntax?

[Tablizer]

Is there any particular reason you're not also asking why JavaScript isn't "HTML based"?

Hmmmm. Why not. All we need are positional parameters, and it would be similar to LISP but with angle brackets instead of parenthesis. LISP fans love their language.

You could promote the attributes to tags, but then you're making forward compatible parsing difficult.

I would rather they focus on making things easy for humans instead of easy for the machine (parser).

Re:why Yet Another Syntax?

[Fweeky]

I would rather they focus on making things easy for humans instead of easy for the machine (parser).

And you propose to do this by turning everything into XML?

You're fired!

Re:why Yet Another Syntax?

[Tablizer]

And you propose to do this by turning everything into XML?

It is not my first choice, but it beats CSS syntax IMO.

Re:Little market for this book....

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, that's what DHTML is, dude. HTML, script, and stylesheets. One would assume it's a good reference for its subject matter, since DHTML is in the title, and all...

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[colnago]

It's a tradeoff. Do you want to double the network traffic? Can the servers handle it? Can users with slow connections handle it? Smart clients can offer a (convenient|faster|more functional|etc.) environment for the user.

Perhaps it's a fun challenge for the developer - I know it was for me once. I loved the opportunity to get our stuff working cross-platform. I also developed a pretty neat OO javascript compliance calculator that did field formating and calculating on the fly cross browser (see andyerickson.org). The spec from Netscape seemed to be enough documentation for me.

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[cmallinson]

And don't waste time learning JavaScript! Your time is better spent learning PHP, Java, Python, you name it. You can't use JavaScript anywhere else.

That's like saying "Don't buy a car. You can only use it on roads!"

I don't care if JavaScript can only be used client side for web sites. There are a whole lot of websites, and a whole lot of clients. Besides, the more processing I can keep off of my server the better.

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

You can use PHP for web page scripting, and not "anywhere else".

I realize you're mainly being facetious, but my knee is jerking...

Although it's "tuned for" server-side web applications, PHP has quite a lot of useful capabilities built into it. Think of it as "PERL lite", with an easier-to-follow syntax.

I find myself using the command-line version of the interpreter frequently. It doesn't have nearly as "broad" of a range of capabilities as, say, PERL does, but it's hard to beat for the sorts of things that it's tuned for - internet communications, text-handling, simple on-the-fly graphics, and talking to database servers, for example, whether you use it within a web page or at the command line as a cron job...

Ah, there, got my knee to stop...

At any rate, I agree completely with the point of your post - just because some people abuse javascript for fluff and nonsense doesn't discount the real usefulness it has. As an earlier poster pointed out, a combination of client-side javascript and server-side PHP can generate some really kick-butt web-based applications...

Road of understaning DOM

[danalien]

Intro
We could go out and buy fancy books like this, but let's not forget who sets the offical standards around here; the World Wide Web Consortium do. So reading their free version is as good as any other book (but maybe it may not be as "forth comming" in writting, as books tend to be, were they'll explain what the W3C first worte).

Short summary, W3C is for us (geeks with experience) wanting to know, without forking over money for it.


The info
So lets head over to: http//www.w3.org

A quick look around, and no "DHTML"; but there's that "DOM" *click*.

We're now in DO[O]M land (here's were DOOM came to life, ya' know)..*ohh* I mean DOM! land : )
Here we find:

• What is the Document Object Model?
  The Document Object Model is a platform- and language-neutral interface that will allow programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure and style of documents. The document can be further processed and the results of that processing can be incorporated back into the presented page. This is an overview of DOM-related materials here at W3C and around the web.
  
  Why the Document Object Model?
  "Dynamic HTML" is a term used by some vendors to describe the combination of HTML, style sheets and scripts that allows documents to be animated. The W3C has received several submissions from members companies on the way in which the object model of HTML documents should be exposed to scripts. These submissions do not propose any new HTML tags or style sheet technology. The W3C DOM WG is working hard to make sure interoperable and scripting-language neutral solutions are agreed upon.
  

Now go one more block, till you come to"Public Release of Specifications", turn left at the " DOM Technical Reports ".


Now we have a nice view of all DO[O]M land. *Pretty isn't it? :)*

Two more blocks, look out for "Document Object Model Level 3", and turn right at " Document Object Model Level 3 Core"
[Now you are wondering why Level 3? Not 2? Well, if you would read Level 2 (and compare with 3), you would notice there's missing a _good_ explained section; and that's were we are heading :P]

Straigt forward, till "Table of contents", and make a turn at " What is the Document Object Model?

Now park your quiche'ster mister/miss. And fork over the money!!! :)

• What is the Document Object Model?
  Editors:
  Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C
  Lauren Wood, SoftQuad Software Inc. (for DOM Level 2)
  Jonathan Robie, Texcel (for DOM Level 1)
  
  Introduction
  The Document Object Model (DOM) is an application programming interface (API) for valid HTML and well-formed XML documents. It defines the logical structure of documents and the way a document is accessed and manipulated. In the DOM specification, the term "document" is used in the broad sense - increasingly, XML is being used as a way of representing many different kinds of information that may be stored in diverse systems, and much of this would traditionally be seen as data rather than as documents. Nevertheless, XML presents this data as documents, and the DOM may be used to manage this data.
  
  With the Document Object Model, programmers can build documents, navigate their structure, and add, modify, or delete elements and content. Anything found in an HTML or XML document can be accessed, changed, deleted, or added using the Document Object Model, with a few exceptions - in particular, the DOM interfaces for the XML internal and external subsets have not yet been specified.
  
  As a W3C specification, one important objective for the Document Object Model is to provide a standard programming interface that can be used in a wide variety of environments and applications. The DOM is designed to be used with any programming language. In order to provide a precise, language-independent specification of the DOM interfaces, we have chosen to define the specifications in Object Management Group (OMG) IDL [OMG IDL], as defined in the CORBA 2.3.1 specification [CORBA]. In addition to the OMG IDL specification, we provide language bindings for Java [Java] and ECMAScript [ECMAScript] (an industry-standard scripting language based on JavaScript [JavaScript] and JScript [JScript]).
  
  
  What the Document Object Model is not
  This section is designed to give a more precise understanding of the DOM by distinguishing it from other systems that may seem to be like it.
  
  
• The Document Object Model is not a binary specification. DOM programs written in the same language binding will be source code compatible across platforms, but the DOM does not define any form of binary interoperability.
• The Document Object Model is not a way of persisting objects to XML or HTML. Instead of specifying how objects may be represented in XML, the DOM specifies how XML and HTML documents are represented as objects, so that they may be used in object oriented programs.
• The Document Object Model is not a set of data structures; it is an object model that specifies interfaces. Although this document contains diagrams showing parent/child relationships, these are logical relationships defined by the programming interfaces, not representations of any particular internal data structures.
• The Document Object Model does not define what information in a document is relevant or how information in a document is structured. For XML, this is specified by the XML Information Set [XML Information set]. The DOM is simply an API to this information set.
• The Document Object Model, despite its name, is not a competitor to the Component Object Model [COM]. COM, like CORBA, is a language independent way to specify interfaces and objects; the DOM is a set of interfaces and objects designed for managing HTML and XML documents. The DOM may be implemented using language-independent systems like COM or CORBA; it may also be implemented using language-specific bindings like the Java or ECMAScript bindings specified in this document.
• 
  
  
  Where the Document Object Model came from
  The DOM originated as a specification to allow JavaScript scripts and Java programs to be portable among Web browsers. "Dynamic HTML" was the immediate ancestor of the Document Object Model, and it was originally thought of largely in terms of browsers. However, when the DOM Working Group was formed at W3C, it was also joined by vendors in other domains, including HTML or XML editors and document repositories. Several of these vendors had worked with SGML before XML was developed; as a result, the DOM has been influenced by SGML Groves and the HyTime standard. Some of these vendors had also developed their own object models for documents in order to provide an API for SGML/XML editors or document repositories, and these object models have also influenced the DOM.
  

Now you find yourself all alone on the road again.....

IE box model?

[yerricde]

all the trouble web designers are going through making special cases for the amounts of browser/version combinations.

What about the difference between IE's box model (a box's width is outside its border) and CSS's (a box's width is inside its padding)? Is box-within-box the accepted model?

well...

[fredopalus]

i was going to by this book, but i found that it was making the car tires flat

I think DHTML paints the wrong picture

[Anonymous Coward]

We use DHTML for all sorts of neat-o stuff.

Say you pull back a recordset. You display it in a line-item view. The user can click on the row, where we just format the page around the data differently, based on what the user wants to see, based on what the user has the capability to see. People hear DHTML and think "Giant glowing pickles flying out from the left, and menus that pop out when you sneeze." There is alot more to it than that...

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[Black Perl]

I don't care if JavaScript can only be used client side for web sites. There are a whole lot of websites, and a whole lot of clients. Besides, the more processing I can keep off of my server the better.

You couldn't be more wrong. I'm a consultant, and when I need to write a server-side ASP script, I do it in JavaScript. IIS supports server-side JavaScript* out of the box.

* Note: for purposes of the above message, JavaScript = JScript = ECMAScript

Don't bother with VRML

[aWalrus]

VRML never took off. Too many problems and difficulties with the implementation. I did some work with it and it was pretty cool at the beginning, but its handling of textures and lighting left much to be desired (a moderately complex scenario with more than 5 point lights tended to degrade performance very quickly, even with fast video cards).

I think that the later versions were much better, but by then the hype had faded. There are some other projects with more promising standards for easy 3d world creation out there I think.
--

RelativeLayers

[gbevin]

For people interested in DHTML, RelativeLayers can be a very helpful toolkit :

http://www.uwyn.com/projects/relativelayers/index. html.

From the project description :

RelativeLayers is a Javascript library for creating dynamic designs that adapt themselves to the user's browser dimension. It supports Netscape, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Konqueror and Opera. Lots of website design concepts have been re-thought and optimized.

RelativeLayers unifies web design and takes it a step further by introducing features such as error handling, browser detection, real-time moving / resizing / clipping, relative positioning and dimensioning, external page embedding, a revised event model, automatic limit enforcement, drag & drop and a lot more.

Hands down, the best web-book I've owned

[telstar]

Without a doubt, the first edition of this book is the best web book I've owned. I use it regularly to check myself on unmemorized topics, and lend it out to friends that find themselves in the same boat.

It's a great combination of HTML/Javascript/DHTML/CSS etc.

Well worth the money.

Quality Or The Writing Itself?

[Anonymous Coward]

The quality of Danny Goodman's writing is both technically accurate and easy to read.

Gah! I hate this sort of grammatical mishmash. Is the quality of Goodman's writing accurate, or is Goodman's writing accurate? Extra words always lead to muddled expression.

(I hate to nitpick, but this does seem to be a common mistake made in Slashdot postings. Sheesh!)

Re:Little market for this book....

[mla_anderson]

Perhaps the question should be who is using a browser other than IE. I have to use IE to make sure my pages work in IE, just like I keep Netscape 4.xx around to make sure my apps work for those. Generally though Mozilla is my browser of choice. Thus I can't answer that I am someone who doesn't use IE.

Re:Laura Lemay as a web guru :-)

[CodeShark]

The web site may be out of date, but good writing never does. Laura, your HTML books are some of the best "tech training" manuals I have ever had the pleasure of reading and I hope you made more than a few pennies for your efforts. In fact, when I mentor new folks in web programming I tell the person I am mentoring to try to find one of your books at the library, Amazon, or where ever they can come up with it.

Folks, if you've never had the pleasure, consider this: How often do you end up laughing out loud about the supposed dangers of "ostrich farming" when you are actually learning what is essentially a programming language? So my thanks to Ms. Lemay and dannyg (plus the php crew) for many hours of amusement that got me from being literate as a C++ and SQL database designer to being able to do pretty darn good database backed web sites from design all the way through to release.

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[vbweenie]

You can write ASP in JavaScript (well, OK, JScript) if you wanna. And you can use it as a scripting language for COM components of any kind, if you use the MS Script Control. I've scripted terminal emulation clients and MS Office apps in JScript. I don't know if there's an equivalent framework in *nix - is th'Gimp ECMA-scriptable? How about Gnumeric?

In MS land, you're probably better off with Ruby or Python plus COM bindings, if your place of work will let you use them (mine won't...). But ECMA-script is a pretty neat second best - unless you'd rather use VBScript...

How about doing it declaratively?

[leighklotz]

<model>
<instance>
<login>
<username/>
<password/>
</login>
</instance>
<bind nodeset="username" required="true()"/>
<bind nodeset="password" require="true()"/>
</model>

<input ref="username">
<label>Username</label>
</input >
<secret ref="password">
<label>Password</label>
</secret>

See http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/forms -- and there's already an IE plugin that does it.

Re:Little market for this book....

[Saeger]

I tried it, and it annoyed me for one simple reason: IT BROKE MY BACK BUTTON!

Screw it.

--

Re:Can one person be expert on all of these topics

[budgenator]

Javascript is a language, and there is even a stand-alone implimentation. Javascript is embedded in other programs, it's just not popular for other uses.

I think it is/was also used for server-side stuff in netscape's webserver