Advantages for Using FrontPage... maybe this HTML editor has some hidden advantages
Ever since I've been doing SEO work, I've always griped and complained about FrontPage and all the extraneous code it puts in the section of the page, etc.
Then recently, I had the opportunity to visit with a group of advanced search...
Content Management Systems (CMS)
Content Management? What's that you may ask - especially when
you are already saturated with HTML, DHTML, PHP, ASP and the lot.
Content Management is basically a system that automates most of
what you do manually on-line without ever opening...
DHTML or Flash?
The last five years has seen an exponential growth in the use of shockwave and flash animations in creating websites. The old tried and trusted techniques such as D/HTML are slowy moving over to make room for this newer multimedia delivery vehicle....
Showing and Hiding HTML elements using Layers
A long time back I visited a site that had a very fancy, animated navigation bar. Now, as a professional web developer, I'm not in favor of DHTML-supported, fancy navigation bars, but it was very fascinating. What they had done was, whenever you...
Web Accessibility. . . Making your Pages Friendly to People with Disabilities
Did you know that nearly 20 percent of all Web users have some form of disability? “Making your site accessible for all is a matter of courtesy, is good business practice, and is not difficult,” explains Robert Roberts, a professional SEO who owns...
DHTML-Introduction
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.
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
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
or
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)
Now the previously hidden layer is now visible. This is essentially how DHTML works, but understand there are hundreds and hundreds of attribute properties for text, images, documents and windows. Not all these properties are supported in both browser and sometime accessing a property requires a few more hurdles, but if you stick to the common denominator properties both browser use then life it a bit easier. I recommend the excellent DHTML reference book Dynamic HTML - The Definitive Guide by Danny Goodman (O'Riley Books) It lists all of the DHMTL properties and their cross browser compatibilities.
About the Author
Eddie Traversa DHTML Nirvana http://nirvana.media3.net/ is a site dedicated to exploring the possibilites of DHTML. It hosts free graphics, dhtml templates and tutorials. Some of the tutorials emphasis is on Flash/DHTML integration.