DHTML - Dynamic HTML
Dynamic HTML, or simply DHTML, is an interesting term.
It refers to using JavaScript to manipulate HTML/CSS content/presentation after the page is fully loaded,
thereby creating "dynamic content" as opposed to static content that never changes after the page is loaded.
Specifically, page content is represented as JavaScript objects available for manipulation by JavaScript to create dynamic effects.
Usually a user event occurs that triggers the dynamic effect.
The term DHTML was invented by marketing executives at Microsoft during the browser wars in the late 1990's
when Microsoft was trying to kill Netscape Navigator in favor of their newly released Internet Explorer browser.
Netscape had actually introduced most of the objects and capabilities that enabled DHTML,
but Microsoft advantageously created the term DHTML to make their browser sound advanced.
Almost from the beginning around 1995, Netscape Navigator provided Browser Objects as introduced in the previous example.
Scripters could manipulate the Browser Objects to create some dynamic effects such as popup windows.
But DHTML was really born when browsers progressed to the point where every element in a Web page
was made available as a JavaScript object.
Now, if it's in the Web page, it can be changed on-the-fly using JavaScript.
Almost from the beginning, Web sites began to accumulate free, pre-built scripts written by various programmers
so that people could quickly put "cool effects" in pages.
Dynamic Drive is one such site that has been around seemingly since the beginning of DHTML.
Some of their dynamic scripts are useful, while some are just cheesy.
In time, more modern and feature rich JavaScript libraries to facilitate DHTML developed.
The most common of these is JQuery.
JQuery is quite complicated and well beyond the scope of this course.
W3Schools has some simple examples of what JQuery can do
including standard dynamic effects such as hide/show, fade, and slide.