What Are Active Web Pages?

Normal HTML pageseverything you've created so farare considered to be static. The page you create is the page that your visitors see, and (assuming that the pages are created without browser-specific code) all your visitors see the same thing.

Scripting languages and DHTML provide the capability to make any HTML element respond to user events, such as mouse clicks. This capability can be used for something as simple as displaying a menu of navigational choices when a word is clicked, to something as complex as a Web application, like online ordering.

Don't be scared off by the word application. There is some programming knowledge that is required to implement these elements into your Web pages, but not much. Unfortunately, I can't teach you everything there is to know about programming, but I can tell you where to find additional information.

The most popular ways of including active elements in your Web pages are described in the sections that follow. Table 14.1 gives a quick overview of the information in this lesson.

Table 14.1. Scripting and Programming

Technique	Comments
ActiveX	ActiveX works natively on Microsoft Internet Explorer and on Netscape with a plug-in.
DHTML	Microsoft and Netscape disagree on how to implement DHTML. You might end up creating two sets of code to make everyone happy.
Java	Platform independent and can be used to create complex applications.
JavaScript	The best of everything. Works on all the major browsers, can be called from a plain HTML page, and you can find plenty of examples to copy into your own Web pages.
VBScript	An easy to learn scripting language, VBScript is the most commonly used language in creating Active Server Pages.