Re: DOM - DHTML and content vs structure

We cannot think of Dynamic HTML as only operating on current HTML elements.
 Dyanmic HTML needs to be though of as an application interface, that will
create and modify the HTML content on the screen based on user actions and
portential interactions with application servers.  Only the simpliest uses
of DHTML can we think of it like a style sheet which only affects the
rendering of static HTML elements.  

Jon
  

At 12:23 AM 10/6/98 +1000, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>Preface: I am not completely up to speed on DOM, particularly in terms of 
>its implementations.  So if I spout some rubbish, would somebody tell me 
>to shut up and point me to the reference I should have read first before 
>I make a real fool of myself.
>
>So:
>It seems to me that DHTML in its various guises is behind plain HTML in 
>understanding the seperation of form and content. While there are scripts 
>which are efffective in changing the presentaion of a page, and others 
>which are used to generate or regenerate the content there seems to be no 
>ability to nominate things as one or the other. Part of this is a 
>chicken-and-egg problem - without a DOM it is difficult to write a script 
>which explicitly has no effect on the Document Object itself, but only 
>the presentation of that object, or to write a script which declares that 
>its effect is on the content of the document object itself. But this 
>seems like a crucial bit of information to have about the behaviour of a 
>scripting object.
>
>This information seems hierarchical to me in the sense that 
>a script could modify a presentation property of an element, for 
>example presentation.font.size or presentation.background.image, or the 
>content or status of that element and its 'relatives' in the DOM tree. 
>This passes the buck to the author of the script, and the scripting 
>language itself. If we can demand that a script declare which properties 
>it affects, or automagically determine that information, we need not bug 
>a user with a whole lot of objects which create (for example) rollover 
>highlights, and can also hope to present those highlights in another 
>medium using appropriate styling where available. 
>
>
>This idea is still half-baked, but I thought I would toss it to the lions 
>as a draft. And I still have a nagging feeling that I am just repeating 
>something that has already been said somewhere.
>
>Charles McCathieNevile
> 
Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
1207 S. Oak Street
Champaign, IL 61820

Voice: 217-244-5870
Fax: 217-333-0248
E-mail: jongund@uiuc.edu
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Received on Monday, 5 October 1998 11:57:38 UTC