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Dynamic HTML The Definitive Reference (2nd edition)
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.
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
Soccer Goal Plans
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!
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.
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.
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.
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.
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.)
Cheers,
Ian
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.
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.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
"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.
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.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
And bookpool has it even cheaper ($36.50). I don't work for them, just a very happy customer. For any IT/CS type books, bookpool is cheapest probably 90% of the time...
-Gabe
this is a result of people confusing Micro$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 _____."
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
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.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
Anything you can do, I can do meta.
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! :)
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...
Cover your eyes and click this link!
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:See that frm.USERNAME rubbish?
If they had just changed that fragment to this:.. 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.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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
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.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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.
Do you also cross the street with knee pads, wrist guards, and a crash helmet?
adam
"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.