Top Quality Website Design Sample

by Eddie Traversa

Think of DHTML as not a singular technology but a combination of three existing technologies glued together by the Document Object Model (DOM):

1. HTML - For creating text and image links and other page elements.

2. CSS - Style Sheets for further formatting of text and html plus other added features such as positioning and layering content.

3. JavaScript - The programming language that allows you to accesses and dynamically control the individual properties of both HTML and Style Sheets.

(state) Washington -> (City) Seattle -> (Listings) j -> (Name) Jessica

In JavaScript, a reference to this would be equivalent to:

washington.seattle.j.jessica

Now Jessica may have additional information such as her address and phone number, so the JavaScript reference would be written this way.

washington.seattle.j.jessica.address

washington.seattle.j.jessica.phone

Lets transcribe the above metaphor to a DHTML document that contains a layer [myLayer] with style attributes [top,left,width,height,z-index,visibility,etc] and the layer contains a bit of text "myText" (Note that the visibility attribute is set to hidden) myText

Web Design Templates Design

DHTML Menu

The way JavaScript accesses the properties of an HTML document is through the Document Object Model (DOM). The job of the DOM is to expose all the attributes of HTML and Style sheets to JavaScript control. All you need to know about the DOM is what JavaScript commands it accepts. Not that easy, as different browsers have their slightly different versions of the DOM, so they access HTML properties differently as well as display them differently.

So how do you locate an HTML element on a page and change its property? This is the job of JavaScript. Obviously, I cant into all the details of JavaScript or the DOM, but here is an example of how JavaScript can change a visibility of a style sheet layer in both browsers.

Note: That every piece of HTML has a location much like a directory in a phone book. When finding that piece of HTML you have to go through the same hierarchy process of searching for a name in the phone book such as: