There are no examples or code in this chapter - it's an introduction, so you don't have anything to download here.
Below are brief summaries of this chapter's sections in the book proper.
What CSS is
What DHTML is
DHTML versus Flash
Browser Hell
What You Need to Know Already
CSS stands for "Cascading Style Sheets." These stylesheets allow you to define several aspects of a web page:
- Font (or fonts) to display text in
- Define a layer and position it on the page
- Modify HTML tags
DHTML stands for "Dynamic HTML." It involves using JavaScript to manipulate stylesheets. For example, you can use JavaScript to manipulate the visibility or position of a layer. This sounds simple, but it's quite powerful. The only major limitation of DHTML is the way it's implemented in different browsers. That is, all of them implement it differently. Generally, I recommend keeping yuour DHTML simple and test continually on different browsers while developing. It's a pain, but it can save you hours of work later.
I'm a big Flash fan. However, the decision to use Flash or DHTML rests with your web site's audience: are they the kind of people that would bother downloading a plug-in or not? Most people are not thrilled with the idea of messing with their browsers, so unless I have a particularly good reason to use Flash, I usually end up using DHTML.
This book and all of the code in it works on Netscape 4.x, Netscape 6 and Internet Explorer on both Mac and Windows platforms.
- some JavaScript
- some HTML
That's it.
Based on reader feedback from the first edition of this book, it has become clear that a few things mentioned in the book need to be brought clearly to light.
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