DHTML

Dynamic Hyper-Text Markup Language is an extension of the Internet Language HTML. It gives the web developer much more control over the look of the page. It uses the object oriented point of thinking and there fore is much more complicated than HTML. I personally like it and hope it catches on more. It has been implemented in Netscape for about 6 months so I hope more people get to know it. If you want to know more use the Netscape Guide. It is good.

DHTML (Dynamic Hyper-Text Markup Language) documents are HTML pages that have dynamic content. DHTML is the combination of three things--HTML, Javascript, and CSS--all using the Document Object Model.

Still in its infancy, DHTML is becoming more popular because it allows more interaction and "dazzle" for the end user.

What needs to be added here is that there IS no DHTML. DHTML is just a buzzword used by browser developers and hotshots. There are no DHTML tags, per se. DHTML is just a general descriptor for anything in a webpage which is dynamic, meaning something that changes through user interaction. JavaScript for instance, usually can make a webpage dynamic, or skilled manipulation of CSS and/or layers. But there is no defined standard, no set of tags that make DHTML. People can set their webpage endings to *.dhtml for instance, but the browser will tell you it's just a plain HTML document. It's only a matter of form.

It should also be noted that, while DHTML may have been put on this Earth to let people make cheesy animations (they're all doing this with Flash anyway), its real potential lies in the ability to create web pages that move beyond the one-step-at-a-time interaction model the Web was built on, and act more like real applications. Say what you want about the absurdity of building an application in a web browser when you could build it in C++, but DHTML is offering ways to keep that Web page you do have to use from wasting quite so much of your time. (And for those who don't think Web applications are absurd at all, there are projects like DynAPI.)

It's also worth looking at DHTML from a peer to peer standpoint. This is not a gratuitous buzzword toss. Think about it: many people browse the web with machines that are absurdly overpowered for what they're doing. Overloaded web servers could be making use of those untapped CPU cycles by moving some of the work to the client side, in the form of more complex JavaScript interaction, client-side rendering of XML with style sheets, and what have you - thereby reducing database load and server lag.