Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference

Changing Content

For many application authors, the holy grail of Dynamic HTML is the ability to manipulate already loaded text and tag content in response to user action. Prior to the Version 4 browsers, the granularity of such changes was no smaller than an entire frame’s document, as demonstrated earlier in this chapter. The situation improves markedly in the Version 4 browsers, with Internet Explorer 4 allowing direct access to any piece of text content displayed in a document. This means that you have much more flexibility with dynamic content in IE 4 than in Navigator 4.

Fixed-Size Containers

Navigator 4 and Internet Explorer 4 provide browser-specific tags for defining rectangular spaces that hold content. They’re treated quite differently in the two browsers, so it is rare that you will be able to achieve an identical look and feel for a document displayed in both browsers, regardless of how much branching you use to try to pull it off.

What the two browsers have in common is that you can use the tags to load an external document into a floating block above the main document or embed an external document as inline content. With the exception of the inline version in Navigator 4, the content of the block can be changed on the fly after the document has loaded. The rectangular block can be treated like a frame or a window; you can set its src attribute to a different URL, or you can write directly to the document object with a script.

Navigator 4 <LAYER>

The Navigator 4 ...