Dynamic Html in Action (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Dynamic HTML in Action does a great job of explaining how to use HTML and Dynamic HTML, as well as client-side scripting languages and other Web technologies (particularly as they apply to Microsoft's client-side Web software). Primarily, this book reveals a lot about the ways Web designers can make their pages' content look its best. Supplemented with information about the technologies that enable clients to make queries against databases, Dynamic HTML in Action will do a lot to improve the quality of the material on Web sites and intranets.

The early portions of this book will look familiar to anyone who's built any sort of Web page, since the authors cover traditional HTML tags first. From there, they proceed to show how to incorporate client-side scripts in HTML documents by providing a fine tutorial on event handlers, data structures, control structures, and the relevant aspects of object orientation, particularly in JavaScript. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)--still the most popular way to define complex styles--get excellent explanatory treatment. Dynamic HTML in Action also shows how to integrate scripting by using scripts to alter styles. Filters and transitions are well documented, along with embedded multimedia.

This book isn't all about appearances. There's solid coverage of Dynamic HTML's capacity to work with Data Source Objects (DSOs) and data bindings that provide efficient connections between client-side documents and back-end databases. And while the authors stop well short of fully documenting Extensible Markup Language (XML), they do provide an excellent introduction to the capabilities of this up-and-coming data-description system. --David Wall

Product Description

DYNAMIC HTML IN ACTION, SECOND EDITION, is a valuable guide for HTML/Web authors eager to get the most out of the extended interactive and multimedia abilities of Dynamic HTML version 2 (as featured in Internet Explorer 5-and possibly supported by Netscape as well). DYNAMIC HTML IN ACTION, SECOND EDITION, covers everything that makes Internet Explorer 5 the next breakthrough technology for creating dynamic Web content: Dynamic HTML, dynamic content and dynamic styles, the Internet Explorer 5 object model, new Table features, 2D positioning, and data binding. All topics are covered in clear, succinct language with plenty of sample pages on the CD to make learning these new tools as engaging and interesting as the content Web users will eventually create.

Product Details

• Paperback: 497 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Pr; 2nd edition (March 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735605637
• ISBN-13: 978-0735605633
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,201,481 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The BEST tutorial/learning book on HTML/DHTML, August 7, 1999

By A Customer

This is the best book I've seen for learning DHTML. I taught for years and the author has a gift for explaining both simple and complex ideas in a very readable but information-rich format.
Like a reviewer below, I also found the book to be full of tons of links to useful online references and the CD to have a lot of useful info/demos.
As far as the book's coverage of different browsers, I thought that it covered the most important issues-what does not work in different browsers. There are even a few places where it deals with Opera and things like spiders and text only browsers, though of course most of the coverage is of Netscape and Internet Explorer.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a readable, accessible primer-to-intermediate guide, July 11, 1999

By A Customer

True, this is not a great reference, though the CD contains great reference material and there are www links scattered liberally throughout the text. For more general DHTML references one would do better with either Goodman's "Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Guide" (O'Reilly & Assoc., 1998) for a cross-platform perspective or Francis et al. "IE5 DHTML Prog. Ref. 2nd Ed." (Wrox Press, 1999) for a very IE5-centric text.

What this book excels at is showing you how to do stuff with DHTML, combining (Java)script-ing, CSS, and touching on XML. It doesn't go deeply into any particular subject, nor does it skim too lightly, and its "portal" approach almost guarantees there are links to more information.

Netscape-centric developers will find this text off-putting to offensive. This book stresses - though is not exclusive to - IE4 and 5. As Microsoft and Netscape converge on the W3C DHTML specification we can hope browser-specific DHTML books will be replaced by more standardized texts.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is at least slightly familiar with the technologies and wants to put them together quickly to create eye-catching sites. Its Javascript tutorial is weak - if you're not already familiar with Javascript or its siblings (JScript, ECMAScript) start elsewhere then return to this book for practical uses of Javascript.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book-don't pay much attention to tbrandt 23's review, October 8, 2000

By A Customer

The best audience for this book is probably a beginner or intermediate web developer. It does a great job of TEACHING. It isn't a reference-it's only 500 pages and a reference that just covers scripting (which won't teach you anything) will fill well over that. It gives very good coverage of HTML and good scripting and css sections (it has two screenshots showing how all the text related css attributes are rendered in Internet Explorer and Netscape).

The latter part of the book is devoted to a lot of Internet Explorer specific technologies that could be of use a lot of use to people developing intranet sites.

This book details many features that work in Internet Explorer and not in the latest Netscape product. HOWEVER, that is to be expected since Netscape has not released a new browser in several years. The advantage of this book is that it doesn't present the user with a just one feature set-it lets the reader know what things work and what don't in each browser, although there is a focus on the Microsoft product. In some cases it even details how the Mozilla betas differ from the released Netscape browser and it mentions Opera a couple of times.