Editing Dynamic HTML (section)

== Uses ==

DHTML allows authors to add effects to their pages that are otherwise difficult to achieve, by changing the [[Document Object Model]] (DOM) and page style. The combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript offers ways to:

* Animate text and images in their document.
* Embed a ticker or other dynamic display that automatically refreshes its content with the latest news, stock quotes, or other data.
* Use a form to capture user input, and then process, verify and respond to that data without having to send data back to the server.
* Include rollover buttons or drop-down menus.

A less common use is to create browser-based action games. Although a number of games were created using DHTML during the late 1990s and early 2000s,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Fun and Games With DHTML |first=Stephen |last=Downes |date=        Aug 18, 1999 |url=https://www.downes.ca/post/276 |access-date=2022-08-27 |website=Stephen's Web |language=en}}</ref> differences between browsers made this difficult: many techniques had to be implemented in code to enable the games to work on multiple platforms. Browsers have since then converged toward [[web standards]], which has made the design of DHTML games more viable. Those games can be played on all major browsers and in desktop and device applications that support embedded browser contexts.

The term "DHTML" has fallen out of use in recent years as it was associated with practices and conventions that tended to not work well between various web browsers.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ferguson |first1=Russ |last2=Heilmann |first2=Christian |title=Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax |date=2013 |publisher=Berkeley, CA: Apress |pages=49–68 |doi=10.1007/978-1-4302-5093-7 |isbn=978-1-4302-5092-0 |s2cid=20526670 |url=https://link-springer-com.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu/content/pdf/10.1007/978-1-4302-5093-7.pdf |access-date=May 30, 2022}}</ref>

DHTML support with extensive DOM access was introduced with [[Internet Explorer 4.0]]. Although there was a basic dynamic system with [[Netscape Navigator|Netscape Navigator 4.0]], not all HTML elements were represented in the DOM. When DHTML-style techniques became widespread, varying degrees of support among web browsers for the technologies involved made them difficult to develop and [[debug]]. Development became easier when [[Internet Explorer 5|Internet Explorer 5.0+]], [[Firefox|Mozilla Firefox]] 2.0+, and [[Opera (web browser)|Opera]] 7.0+ adopted a shared [[Document Object Model|DOM]] inherited from [[ECMAScript]].

Later, [[JavaScript library|JavaScript libraries]] such as [[jQuery]] abstracted away many of the day-to-day difficulties in cross-browser DOM manipulation, though better standards compliance among browsers has reduced the need for this.