DHTML Innovation

DHTML Innovation

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Wikipekia

Dynamic HTML, or DHTML, is a term which was used by some browser vendors to describe the combination of HTML, style sheets and client-side scripts (JavaScript, VBScript, or any other supported scripts) that enabled creation of interactive and animated documents. The application of DHTML was introduced by Microsoft with the release of Internet Explorer 4 in 1997.

DHTML | A Quick Glance of DHTML with Components, Features, Need

DHTML allows scripting languages to change variables in a web page’s definition language, which in turn affects the look and function of otherwise “static” HTML page content, after the page has been fully loaded and during the viewing process. Thus the dynamic characteristic of DHTML is the way it functions while a page is viewed, not in its ability to generate a unique page with each page load.

By contrast, a dynamic web page is a broader concept, covering any web page generated differently for each user, load occurrence, or specific variable values. This includes pages created by client-side scripting, and ones created by server-side scripting (such as PHP, Python, JSP or ASP.NET) where the web server generates content before sending it to the client.

DHTML is predecessor of Ajax and DHTML pages are still request/reload-based. Under DHTML model, there may not be any interaction between the client and server after the page is loaded; all processing happens on the client side. By contrast, Ajax extends features of DHTML to allow page to initiate network requests (or ‘subrequest’) to the server even after page load to perform additional actions. For example, if there are multiple tabs on a page, pure DHTML approach would load the contents of all tabs and then dynamically display only the one that is active, while AJAX could load each tab only when it is really needed.

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, differences between browsers made this difficult: many techniques had to be implemented in code to enable the games to work on multiple platforms. Recently browsers have been converging towards web standards, which has made the design of DHTML games more viable. Those games can be played on all major browsers and they can also be ported to Plasma for KDE, Widgets for mac OS and Gadgets for Windows Vista, which are based on DHTML code.

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.

DHTML support with extensive DOM access was introduced with Internet Explorer 4.0. Although there was a basic dynamic system with 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 5.0+, Mozilla Firefox 2.0+, and Opera 7.0+ adopted a shared DOM inherited from ECMAScript.

More recently, JavaScript libraries such as jQuery have abstracted away many of the day-to-day difficulties in cross-browser DOM manipulation.

A prime example of innovation involved the boom of Silicon Valley start-ups out of the Stanford Industrial Park. In 1957, dissatisfied employees of Shockley Semiconductor, the company of Nobel laureate and co-inventor of the transistor William Shockley, left to form an independent firm, Fairchild Semiconductor. After several years, Fairchild developed into a formidable presence in the sector. Eventually, these founders left to start their own companies based on their own unique ideas, and then leading employees started their own firms. Over the next 20 years this process resulted in the momentous startup-company explosion of information-technology firms. Silicon Valley began as 65 new enterprises born out of Shockley’s eight former employees.

Another example involves business incubators – a phenomenon introduced in 1959 and subsequently nurtured by governments around the world. Such “incubators”, located close to knowledge clusters (mostly research-based) like universities or other government excellence centres – aim primarily to channel generated knowledge to applied innovation outcomes in order to stimulate regional or national economic growth.

In the 21st century the Islamic State (IS) movement, while decrying religious innovations, has innovated in military tactics, recruitment, ideology and geopolitical activity.

An early model included only three phases of innovation. According to Utterback (1971), these phases were: 1) idea generation, 2) problem solving, and 3) implementation. By the time one completed phase 2, one had an invention, but until one got it to the point of having an economic impact, one didn’t have an innovation. Diffusion wasn’t considered a phase of innovation. Focus at this point in time was on manufacturing.

All organizations can innovate, including for example hospitals, universities, and local governments. The organization requires a proper structure in order to retain competitive advantage. Organizations can also improve profits and performance by providing work groups opportunities and resources to innovate, in addition to employee’s core job tasks. Executives and managers have been advised to break away from traditional ways of thinking and use change to their advantage. The world of work is changing with the increased use of technology and companies are becoming increasingly competitive. Companies will have to downsize or reengineer their operations to remain competitive. This will affect employment as businesses will be forced to reduce the number of people employed while accomplishing the same amount of work if not more.

For instance, former Mayor Martin O’Malley pushed the City of Baltimore to use CitiStat, a performance-measurement data and management system that allows city officials to maintain statistics on several areas from crime trends to the conditions of potholes. This system aided in better evaluation of policies and procedures with accountability and efficiency in terms of time and money. In its first year, CitiStat saved the city $13.2 million. Even mass transit systems have innovated with hybrid bus fleets to real-time tracking at bus stands. In addition, the growing use of mobile data terminals in vehicles, that serve as communication hubs between vehicles and a control center, automatically send data on location, passenger counts, engine performance, mileage and other information. This tool helps to deliver and manage transportation systems.

Still other innovative strategies include hospitals digitizing medical information in electronic medical records. For example, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s HOPE VI initiatives turned severely distressed public housing in urban areas into revitalized, mixed-income environments; the Harlem Children’s Zone used a community-based approach to educate local area children; and the Environmental Protection Agency’s brownfield grants facilitates turning over brownfields for environmental protection, green spaces, community and commercial development.