Amazon.co.uk Review
Goodman assumes a solid foundation, if not expertise, in basic HTML and an understanding of what DHTML is all about. From those assumptions, he presents a meaty, information-dense volume. The first of the book's four sections discusses industry standards and how to apply the basic principles of DHTML. He emphasises the differences in Web browsers and discusses how to build pages so that they work well in both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. The second section is an extensive, quick reference of all the tags, objects and properties of HTML, cascading style sheets, Document Object Model, and core JavaScript. A particularly handy cross-reference guide to this information follows, helping you locate it in alternate ways. The final section contains appendices, with useful tables of values and commands. --Elizabeth Lewis
Joel Spolsky, http://www.joelonsoftware.com, October 9, 2002
Major Kearny, Book News, Jan 2003
Book Description
Product Description
If you are a Web content developer these days, you have a lot of information to keep track of. You need to stay current on the relevant Web specifications, like HTML, CSS, DOM, and ECMAScript. You also need to know how the latest Web browsers from Netscape and Microsoft actually implement these standards, since browser implementations of the standards are less than perfect. Right now, you're forced to keep multiple reference books open on your desk (or multiple browser windows open on your screen), just to develop a simple dynamic Web page that works properly under both Navigator and Internet Explorer.
Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference changes all that. This book is an indispensable compendium for Web content developers. It contains everything you need to create functional cross-platform Web applications, including:
- A complete reference for all of the HTML tags, CSS style attributes, browser document objects, and JavaScript objects supported by the various standards and the latest versions of Navigator and Internet Explorer. Browser compatibility is emphasized throughout; the reference pages clearly indicate browser support for every entity.
- Handy cross-reference indexes that make it easy to find interrelated HTML tags, style attributes, and document objects.
- An advanced introduction to creating dynamic Web content that addresses the cross-platform compromises inherent in Web page design today.
If you have some experience with basic Web page creation, but are new to the world of dynamic content, Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference will jump-start your development efforts. If you are an experienced Web programmer, you'll find the browser-compatibility information invaluable. This book is the only DHTML reference that a Web developer needs.
Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference is designed to work in conjunction with HTML: The Definitive Guide and JavaScript: The Definitive Guide. HTML: The Definitive Guide teaches you about every element of HTML in detail, with explanations of how each element works and how it interacts with other elements, as well as numerous examples. JavaScript: The Definitive Guide provides a thorough description of the JavaScript language, complete with sophisticated examples that show you how to handle common Web application tasks. Together, these three books provide a complete library for Web content developers.
From the Publisher
About the Author
has been writing about personal computers and consumer electronics since the late 1970s. In 2001, he celebrated 20 years as a free lance writer and programmer, having published hundreds of magazine articles, several commercial software products, and three dozen computer books. Through the years, his most popular book titles on HyperCard, AppleScript, JavaScript, and Dynamic HTML have covered programming environments that are both accessible to non-professionals yet powerful enough to engage experts. His JavaScript Bible book is now in its fourth edition. To keep up to date on the needs of web developers for his recent books, Danny is also a programming consultant to some of the industry's top intranet development groups and corporations. His expertise in implementing sensible cross-browser client-side scripting solutions is in high demand and allows him to, in his words, "get code under my fingernails while solving real-world problems." Danny was born in Chicago, Illinois during the Truman Administration. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in Classical Antiquity from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He moved to California in 1983 and lives in a small San Francisco area coastal community, where he alternates views between computer screens and the Pacific Ocean.
Excerpted from Dynamic HTML by Danny Goodman. Copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
In this chapter:
What Is a Platform?
Navigator 4 DHTML
Internet Explorer 4 DHTML
Cross-Platform Strategies
Cross-Platform Expectations
Declaring support for industry standards is a noble act. But when each web browser maker is also out to put its stamp on the details of still-evolving standards, it's easy to see how a new browser release can embody ideas and extensions to standards that are not available in other browsers. With so many standards efforts related to Dynamic HTML in play at the release of both Netscape Navigator 4 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4, implementation differences were bound to occur. This chapter provides an overview of each browser's approach to DHTML. It also explores some strategies that you might use for DHTML applications that must run identically on Navigator and Internet Explorer.
What Is a Platform?
The term platform has multiple meanings in web application circles, depending on how you slice the computing world. Typically, a platform denotes any hardware and/or software system that forms the basis for further product development. Operating system developers regard each microprocessor family as a platform (Pentium, PowerPC, or SPARC CPUs, for example); desktop computer application developers treat the operating system as the platform (Win16, Windows 95/NT, MacOS8, Unix, Linux, and the rest); peripherals makers perceive a combination of hardware and operating system as the platform (for example, a Wintel machine or a Macintosh).
The de facto acceptance of the web protocols, such as HTTP, means that a web application developer doesn't have to worry about the underlying network transport protocols that are being used. Theoretically, all client computers equipped with browsers that support the web protocols-regardless of the operating system or CPU-should be treated as a single platform. The real world, however, doesn't work that way.
Today's crop of web browsers are far more than data readers. Each one includes a highly customized content rendering engine, a scripting language interpreter, a link to a custom Java virtual machine, security access mechanisms, and connections to related software modules. The instant you decide to author content that will be displayed in a web browser, you must concern yourself with the capabilities built into each browser. Despite a certain level of interoperability due to industry-wide standards, you must treat each major browser brand as a distinct development platform. Writing content to the scripting API or HTML tags known to be supported by one browser does not guarantee support in the other browser.
If you are creating content, you must also be aware of differences in the way each browser has been tailored to each operating system. For example, even though the HTML code for embedding a clickable button inside a form is the same for both Navigator and Internet Explorer, the look of that button is vastly different when rendered in Windows, Macintosh, and Unix versions of either browser. That's because the browser makers have appropriately observed the traditions of the user interface look and feel for each operating system. Thus, a form whose elements are neatly laid out to fit inside a window or frame of a fixed size in Windows may be aligned in a completely unacceptable way when displayed in the same browser on a Macintosh or a Unix system.
Even though much of the discussion in this book uses "cross-platform" to mean compatible with both Netscape and Microsoft browsers ("cross-browser" some might call it), you must also be mindful of operating-system-specific details. Even the precise positioning capabilities of "cross-platform" cascading style sheets do not eliminate the operating-system-specific vagaries of form elements and font rendering. If you are developing DHTML applications, you can eliminate pre-version 4 browsers from your testing matrix, but there are still a number of browser and operating system combinations that you need to test.
