Scripting within HTML documents has come a long way since Netscape first introduced Javascript in Netscape 2.0. SO much so that in Netscape, recent Javascript enhancements make a large proportion of the document content available through scripting, which allows significant display manipulation on the client side, saving slower trips back to servers to update pages. Microsoft have fully embraced and indeed extended scripting in HTML, including JScript and Visual Basic Script in Internet Explorer, also adopting various W3C specifications to the point where everything that is included in a document is available to be manipulated in various ways through either of their supported scripting languages.

The scripting reference of the HTMLib starts off with an overview of methods of attaching scripts to document elements, followed by an overview of Javascript and Visual Basic Script. There are details of all of the standard Dynamic HTML properties, methods and events, followed by a detailed look at the various element objects exposed in the browsers Scripting Object models.

Scripting for Internet Explorer 4.0 exposes every element in a document for scripting manipulation - changing its position, colour, style, adding or removing elements etc, while Netscape has rather more limited scripting support, although the most important parts of a document are available for scripting.

© 1995-1998, Stephen Le Hunte

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