The assignment was to go on to the Web and do a search on the words W3C DHTML standards. Then investigate the sites listed on the search engines results page and locate two articles regarding recommendations or standards that were released within the past 6 months. For each article, we were to use Microsoft and Netscape's Web sites to research whether the W3C standard was supported in each company's fourth-generation browser or if company has announced plans to comply with standard in a future release. |
Well, I did my research and found that the term Dynamic HTML is not a language or a specification. It's not even a technology. It's a marketing term that implies using CSS, JavaScript, and the DOM to make Web pages dynamic and interactive. |
The DOM acts as the glue that holds other standards like HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and ECMAScript (a.k.a. JavaScript) together. It is the standardized interface of the DOM that will provide the necessary element for Dynamic HTML to work reliably across browsers. A DOM is not a new thing. In fact, Internet Explorer and Navigator both already have DOMs, but their differences give Web builders headaches working around compatibility problems. A standardized DOM could solve a lot of cross-compatibility problems for people building dynamic, interactive pages. |
Even though there are W3C recommendations for CSS, HTML, and DOM use neither of the big browser makers have implemented W3C DOM standards into their currant forth-generation browsers in any useful form. |
Microsoft has its own DOM, regardless of how much of W3C DOM they support. Netscape's browser uses a DOM that was developed three or four years ago. Both companies' are saying that they are planning to implement more-complete support for the official W3C DOM standard into their fifth-generation browsers but both companies are giving mixed signals as to what they will and will not support. |