availability of dhtml

J

JetEngineCom

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i read some review that indicated that dhtml projects were no longer available in vb.net. At the time i had not used dhtml. Now i have been reading about dhtml's usefullness in scalability and i am an enthusiastic convert. can somebody please clarify how dhtml's client-side functionality has been retained in vb.net? was it done away with in the first place ... it would crazy to do away with such useful functionality?
 
It isn't. You're one of the few people I've heard of that actually used that project type in VB6. I don't even know enough about it to be able to say what the closest thing to it is in VS.NET.
 
DHTML in theory is a great tool, however in practice very few people actually get anywhere with it. I'd suggest investing in a server-side language such as ASP.NET or PHP instead.
 
Well from what I remember, there is the VB version of DHTML and then there's just Dynamic HTML, which is best supported by IE. The DHTML project type in VB was flawed when it came to scalability - it just wasn't. And, since it required IE to run, it limited its use to those clients that ran on an intranet. If you already had your clients nailed down to IE, then you had lots of other options including client-side controls, bound XML data islands, and other nifty tricks that WERE/ARE scalable.

It was a good idea, but it just wasn't practicle for large-scale applicaitons. Since the main benefet of web applications are scalability, developing a solution based on a non-scalable architecture didn't seem to fit. But, in terms of a robust UI, I believe DHTML was a step in the right direction.

I only played with the DHTML project type a LONG time ago, so I may not be remembering things exactly right.

-Nerseus
 
DHTML was a great tool... or it should have been. But in a world of too many competing standards, DHTML ended up another pseudo-IE-specific technology that just sort of fell off the planet.

I don't think DHTML projects are available in vs.net at all, but Derek is right: ASP.net and PHP can fill any gaps you'd like, and then some.

I would almost qualify JavaScript as universal, if you desperately need a client-side language.

If you really need dynamic content, Flash is inching its way towards ubiquitousness, and it certainly makes a lot prettier client-side stuff than DHTML ever has. (At least, as far as I could ever see.) But if reaching 100% of people is important to you, stick with the pure stuff.

.steve
 
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