Chapter 5 -- The Dynamic HTML Object Model

Chapter 5

Traditionally, HTML documents were static pages. Just as the pages in this book do not change once they are printed, a Web page did not change once it was displayed. If new information needed to be presented to the user, a new page had to be created. Some developers sidestepped this limitation by displaying information in ActiveX controls or in Java applets that allowed dynamically changing content, but these approaches were usually limited and required proprietary components or controls that a user had to download.

In 1996, Microsoft and a company named SoftQuad presented a proposal defining a Document Object Model to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The proposal outlined a way in which a browser could represent an HTML page and provide a standard mechanism for accessing parts of the document. On October 1, 1998, the W3C issued the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 Specification. The Microsoft Internet Explorer Dynamic HTML Object Model is Microsoft's current implementation of the proposed standards.

This chapter takes a look at the underlying principles of the Dynamic HTML Object Model, followed by an overview of the components it comprises. In upcoming chapters, we will investigate how this Dynamic Object Model can be manipulated through the use of script, resulting in dynamic and interactive Web pages. Netscape Navigator supports an Object Model with many of the same components as the Object Model in Internet Explorer. However, the Navigator Object Model supports a more limited list of features and fewer options for content manipulation than does Internet Explorer.



Dynamic HTML in Action
Dynamic HTML in Action
ISBN: 0735605637
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 1999
Pages: 128

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