DHTML stands for Dynamic Hypertext Mark-up Language. It combines HTML, style sheets, and scripts to make Web pages more interactive. That sounds great. However, while both Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and Netscape Communicator 4.0 support dynamic HTML features, they do so in different — and frequently incompatible — ways. However, the browsers will probably be in their fifth generation before users see a concrete standard. The companies say they will work to make their browsers compatible with whatever specification finally decided upon. Personally, I prefer the Microsoft version. Their implementation is closer to the existing standards, and is more feature-rich.

The standards organisation is the W3C, which deals with all the standards in Web matters. The best I could find at the W3C site was the following:

"Dynamic HTML" is a term used by some vendors to describe the combination of HTML, style sheets and scripts that allows documents to be animated. W3C has received several submissions from members companies on the way in which the object model of HTML documents should be exposed to scripts. These submissions do not propose any new HTML tags or style sheet technology. The W3C DOM WG is working hard to make sure interoperable and scripting-language neutral solutions are agreed upon.

Since the versions are mutually incompatible at present, it has become even more important to distinguish between different versions of browsers. Users with Netscape 4.0 and better can be sent to a page with Netscape-specific DHTML, and those with Internet Explorer 4.0 and better sent to a similar page with Internet Explorer-specific code. Users of other browsers can be sent to a third source without the bells and whistles. I haven't done that here, as you may wish to see the source for a particular script even though your browser does not support it.