To Dhtml or Not to Dhtml That is the Question?
By Terry Van Horne (AKA Webmaster T)
Editor and Publisher Of
Webmaster T's World of Design
For quite some time now I have been watching the browser wars
with interest. Partly because I'm very interested in marketing
and secondly because part of my livlihood is dependent upon the
whims of the two giants Microsoft and Netscape. When I say whims
I feel that is an accurate word to describe what has been going
on!
I am very pleased the standards body has finally stood up to one
of them and more or less said "Sorry guys this stuff ain't going
to cut it anymore!". I hope it was done to put the giants in their
place. That being a place of cross browser compatability or else!
The rejection of Netscape's tag by the body was a clear
indication of where we are headed. More importantly to the
members of the development community, what we will have to work
with is becoming much clearer. This lame tag was the best that
Netscape could muster to implement it's sub standard document
object for the current standards. Well, IMHO anyways;)
I first became interested in cross browser compatability
following the threads on the HWG mailing lists after the
release of the current flavors of each browser. There was
a lot of unrest, to say the least. I personally believe it may
have been responsible for the pledge at Anchor Desk one of Ziff
Davis's sites. I saw a few posts by some of the priniciples of
Anchor Desk on that mailing list at the same time.
A lot of design and development people saw the implementation by
the two bigguns'as "take it or leave it we're doin' what we
please." The resounding cry was "we'll leave it, thank you very
much!"
This has left "PUSH", "Channels" and whatever netscape calls their
flavor wallowing and netscape deciding to give away their browser,
code and all!
Folks, they aren't givin' away much IMHO. Basically Mosaic circa
1994, with a bunch of java, outdated proprietary tags and who
knows how many plugins? I believe it will never meet the present
standards in its present form."Look out Peggy I smell a heavy
load a comin!"
That was T yellin in the background to Peggy our mail clint and
saviour. If you're going to bombard me with mail please adreess it
to iwb@globalserve.net with "Hi Peggy" in the subject. Sorry folks
no mail hacks here, you'll have to type it in yourselves.
I am forced to make a statement like that because as it presently
stands there is no known way to format the simple mailto:tag in
any form which is cross platform compatable.In other words you
hack, you loose! The sender doesn't know the mail went into HTML
hell making the programmer (author)or company look unresponsive
to mail. They never got it, how could they respond!
Microsoft saw this and started building their browser to the
standards long ago. Maybe even before joining the standards body.
I get upset when I see statements that make Microsoft out to be
the dark force or bad guy in the browser wars.
There is no ONE bad guy, just two bohemoths fightin' it out.
Unfortunately we're caught in the middle. However, we're only
stuck in the middle if we take a side with either or by siding
with the DOJ who have decided this is a new area that needs a
bureaucratic nightmare! It seems like the US Gov't is keeping
these bureaucrats busy with this and stuff like the Clinton
scandal.
Microsoft has won IMO because they are and were more responsive
to the standards. Netscape continued to try and implement the
standards with a Red Green Handy Man approach using a duct tape
(tags) and balin'wire(plugins)appraoach! Instead of looking at
the DOM!
The title of this article is to DHTML or not to DHTML, That is
the Question? My answer is no, not for the main components of a
site or page. That is, until the next flavor of each browser is
released and assessed. Unless you are ready to spend a lot of
time writing code or have a pretty savvy editor you will never
get real compatability using a single site approach.
At present to implement css or DHTML you better be a veteran
JavaScript or VB coder willing to spend a lot of time or you
build two versions of every site. Good for now but in the long
run a poor strategy. This more or less keeps the small business
off line unless they can learn to do it themselves.
Another way around this is to take it server side as Microsoft
has done with it's Front Page product. I know a lot of you
believe I'm nuts and I've turned traitor when I started toughting
it is as a REAL editor. Capable of doing some pretty neat stuff
with little effort and time.
Look around you and this site is mostly built around objects in
the document to give the same effects as css. I don't have to
write one lick of JavaScript or VB and I spend little or
no time coding for this document. I just developed around borders
and themes.
I wrote this in plain text, drop it into ASC2HTM and it's
converted to HTML. I copy that go to front page make a new page,
open that in the editor, insert a table 540 wide paste text and
about ten minutes later with some fine tuning I have a finished
document. My documents are finally cross browser compatable. Of
course I don't use any client side Active X!! That would defeat
the whole purpose of designing for cross and backward browser
compatability.
In the past the cover has given me fits tryin' to get the same
look for both browsers. Look at some of the past covers in the
archives and now they are always the same in the past it was
like they were made out of elastic!
No muss, no fuss giving me the time to do oher things like
promote the page take the original text document and add it
to my free content area to help me promote the site. This is
how I leverage everything I do using technology to get more
done or leverage my online activity.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Webmaster T (Terry Van Horne) has been promoting and building
www sites since 1996. His site at http://207.176.163.104 or
http://www.tsworldof design.com/ has been used by several
businesses to deveop and promote their web site.
Webmaster T is also the publisher of a popular newsletter
entitled T's bulletin and can be subscribed to by sending a
blank email to
mailto:welcome-tsbulletin@ourlist.net
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