Dynamic HTML

Prerequisites

XHTML
CSS
Some JavaScript

Objectives

Introduction to modern Dynamic HTML (DOM/CSS/JavaScript)
Reuse of some simple JavaScript functions
Object Referencing and modification of contents
Dynamic Styles and Dynamic Positioning
The concept of "tree walking"

Disclaimer

There may be typos (sorry) and mistakes (sorry again)
Please also consult a recent manual or a textbook !

Acknowledgement

These slides have been prepared with the help of

The Gecko DOM Reference and JavaScript reference
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Gecko_DOM_Reference
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/JavaScript
W3C specifications
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Core/
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-HTML/
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Events/
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Style/

HTML and/or XHTML

DOM works with all XHTML versions and all more recent HTML versions (> 4).

Example 1-1: HTML Page (preq-html-page.html)

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> 
<html>
 <head>
  <title>Simple HTML Page</title>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" >
 </head>
 <body>
  <h1>Simple HTML Page</h1>
    <p>Hello</p>
    <hr>   
 </body>
</html>

Notes:

Navigators are very forgiving, you may omit the doctype, the encoding declarations, or even the head. But your page will not validate (which is not acceptable in most professional settings). Don't worry just for this class ...

Example 1-2: XHTML Page

All most recent HTML versions are XHTML.
XHTML is an XML application (i.e. it uses the XML formalism).
XHTML is more powerful than HTML, but more strict and somewhat less forgiving ....
All tags are lower case, all tags must be closed (think "boxes" within "boxes") !!!

1.2 CSS

Style sheet = set of rules that describe how to render XML or (X)HTML elements
Each rule has two parts:
- The selector : defines to which elements a rule applies
- The declaration : defines rendering, i.e. defines values for style properties

Example 1-3: A simple HTML example

H1 { color: red }

P  { font-face: Verdana, sans-serif ; font-size: 12pt}

H1, H2, H3 { color : blue }

H1.ChapterTOC, H2.PeriodeTOC, H2.ExerciceTOC, H2.SectionTOC  {

		display: block;text-indent: 30pt;

		text-align: left; font-size: 14.000000pt;

		font-weight: Bold; 	font-family: "Times";

1.3 JavaScript

JavaScript is a programming language that runs inside your navigator
JavaScript functions are usually defined in the head and within " script " tags
JavaScript functions can be called in various ways from the body of the document
- JavaScript instructions can be inserted within " script " tags (as in the head)
- JavaScript also can be found within "inline" event handler definitions

Note: This is just a FYI-type of slide about JavaScript ....

Note on standardization

The JavaScript language itself is fairly cross-browser compatible
However, event handling and DOM is not fully standard (Microsoft DHTML is not a standard and even IE 7 is still quite far from implementing the DOM level 2.)
Inline events management however is fairly cross-browser compatible
More advanced stuff is less

Note on JavaScript and XHTML

Valid XHTML requires JavaScript to be inserted within a commented CDATA section

<script language="javascript">

// <![CDATA[

   alert ("hello I am alerting you from a valid XHTML Page");

// ]]>

</script>

An other, better solution is to put the javascript code into an external file. E.g.

<script type="text/javascript" src="external.js"

></script>

2. Introduction

2.1 DHTML and DOM - some definitions

DHTML ?

Dynamic HTML (DHTML) does not exist as a standard
DHTML = HTML CSS Javascript Javascript DOM bindings
- So the difficult part is understanding DOM and JavaScript programming ...

DOM = Document Object Model

A document object model (DOM) is an application programming interface (API) for representing a document (such as an HTML document) and accessing and manipulating the various elements (such as HTML tags and strings of text) that make up that document.

Allows Web authors to control and dynamically modify the presentation of their pages
Gives them access to all the elements on their pages
- e.g. Headers, paragraphs, forms, styles
All information is represented in an object hierarchy and from which scripts can retrieve and modify properties and attributes
Non standard extensions give information about navigator and windows ...

A short history

Only recently, DHTML became standardized as DOM Javascript.
Before, DHTML was a nightmare for web developers, i.e. there was total incompatibility between browser brands and lesser incompatibilities between OS and navigator versions.

2.2 History of DOM and DOM levels

DOM is defined by levels and several specifications per level

Level 0

- Non-standardized things, like Microsoft DHTML or Netscape DOM 4.x, etc.
- Methods that concern window and navigator are still being used and implemented in most browsers ...

Level 1 (octobre 1998)

- DOM Level 1 Core: defines how HTML and XML are represented in the machine and can be navigated
- DOM Level 1 HTML: HTML-specific extensions

Level 2 (2001)

- 6 specifications, adding XML namespace support, filtered views and events.
- DOM Level 2 Core Specification (extension of DOM Level 1 Core)
- DOM Level 2 Views Specification
- DOM Level 2 Events Specification: standardizes management of user generated events
- DOM Level 2 Style Specification: CSS
- DOM Level 2 Traversal and Range Specification
- DOM Level 2 HTML Specification: extensions for HTML

Level 3: contains 6 specifications

- DOM Level 3 Core
- DOM Level 3 Load and Save
- DOM Level 3 XPath
- DOM Level 3 Views and Formatting
- DOM Level 3 Requirements
- DOM Level 3 Validation

Other W3C languages that define DOM extensions

- MathML
- SVG
- SMIL

Non W3C languages also may support DOM

- X3D, ....

2.3 Implementations

Most modern browsers (2005 ) implement most of DOM level 1 specs.
Most modern browsers implement at least some of DOM level 2.
Some proprietary DOM 0 still is needed (e.g. navigator information). These are usually cross-browser compatible.
Other "old style" DHTML should be avoided if possible (e.g. "innnerHTML")
Other "old style" DHTML should be avoided in every case (e.g. the MS DHTML model).

Navigator comparison tables:

Comparison of layout engines (DOM) (wikipedia)
http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/w3c_html.html (Quirksmode)
http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/w3c_core.html

Executive summary regarding DOM/DHTML variants:

Plan for the future (use standards whenever possible)
Make sure to test your code with browsers your target population will use

2.4 DOM objects Overview

There are a few system variables that point to objects which allow you to access the current document, the current window and the navigator. The most important ones are:

document : to access and manipulate contents of a page
window : to access information about the window and to create new windows
navigator : to access information about the navigator (browser).

3. Referencing and changing objects

The principle

In order to do some DHTML your script must be able to refer to HTML elements and then change something. So you need to know 4 things:

how to refer to a specific object within a page (also called "document")
how to change the contents of an HTML element
how to define a JavaScript (JS) function that will do this.
how to launch (call) this JS function

Summary of the most simple solution:

Add id="....." attributes to you HTML elements you later want to use
Launch the JavaScript function when the page will load

 <body onload = "start()
">

means "when the page loads into the browser, launch the start() function

Write a little function that does the following
- Use the document.getElementById("your_id") method to refer to an object and use the innerHTML method to change contents of an objects

var my_para
 = document.getElementById(
"p1
");

means: find the HTML with id=p1 in the page and put this object in the my_para variable

alert( "Paragraph contents : "   my_para.innerHTML

 );

means: create a little popup window that will display the "inside" of the referenced HTML element.

Example 3-1: Simple object referencing

reference0.html

<?xml version = "1.0"?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"

   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

Â

<html xmlns = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

   <head>

      <title>Object Model</title>

Â

      <script type = "text/javascript">

         // Definition of a start function

       function start

()

            var my_para
 = document.getElementById(
"p1
");

            alert( "Paragraph contents : "   my_para.innerHTML
 );

         } // end of start function

      </script>

Â

   </head>

Â

   <body onload = "start()
">

      <p id = "p1">
Welcome to our Web page!</p>

   </body>

</html>

Â

Example 3-2: Simple object referencing and change

reference.html
This example shows how to change the contents of an HTML element
Once we have a reference to the HTML element ("para") in this case we can change it

<?xml version = "1.0"?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"

   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

Â

<html xmlns = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

   <head><title>Object Model</title>

      <script type = "text/javascript">

         function start()

            var para = document.getElementById("pText");

            alert( "Page contents : "   para.innerHTML );

            para.innerHTML = "Thanks for coming.";

            alert( "Page contents changed to : "   para.innerHTML );

            para.innerHTML = "Cool, isn't it ?";

      </script>

   </head>

   <body onload = "start()">

      <p id = "pText">Welcome to our Web page!</p>

   </body>

</html>

4. Style

Warning (!!!) "CSS inside the DOM" has slightly different names than CSS properties
For a list see e.g.
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/DOM:CSS
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Style/css.html#CSS-CSS2Properties
But most of the time it's easy to guess the DOM name:
- remove the "-"
- capitalize words (except the first one)
- example: CSS property "background-color" becomes DOM/CSS "backgroundColor".
Some examples:

DOM CSS	CSS property
background	background
backgroundColor	background-color
borderColor	border-color
fontFamily	font-family
fontSize	font-size
marginBottom	margin-bottom
marginLeft	margin-left

In order to change a style property of an element, use the syntax:

object.style.xxx = "yyy";

e.g.

para.style.fontFamily="Helvetica"

Example 4-1: Changing style of background with a prompt

dynamicstyle.html

<html xmlns = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

   <head>

      <title>Object Model</title>

Â

      <script type = "text/javascript">

         <!--

         function start()

            var inputColor
 = prompt(

               "Enter a color name for the "

               "background of this page", "" );

            document.body.style.backgroundColor
 = inputColor
 ;

         // -->

      </script>

   </head>

Â

   <body onload = "start()">

      <p>Welcome to our Web site!</p>

   </body>

</html>

Example 4-2: Change style with a push button

change_style1.html

<script type="text/javascript">

    function changeText()
 {

    var p = document.getElementById("pid");

	p.style.color
 = "blue"

	p.style.fontSize
 = "18pt"

    </script>

.....

<p id="pid"

    onclick="window.location.href = 'http://www.cnn.com/';">News Link</p>

<form>

<p>

    <input value="Change style" type="button" onclick="changeText();">

 </p>

</form>

Example 4-3: Change style forth and back with a push button

change_style2.html

(code not shown here, look at the file please)

5. HTML Window and Navigator

The Window interface gives information about the window
It also includes a reference to the navigator
(Based on the AbstractView interface of DOM Level 2 Views Specification)

A few examples

window.document

gives the document object of a window (useful if you manipulate more than one window)

doc= window.document;

// print the title

window.dump(doc.title);

window.navigator

gives the navigator object

nav = window.navigator;

you then can extract information from the navigator, e.g.

alert ("Language of your browser: " nav.language);

Navigator information is important for writing hairy cross-browser scripts. Here are a few properties of interest (there are more):

navigator.appName

navigator.appVersion

navigator.userAgent

navigator.appCodeName

On the Web, you can find good browser detection scripts, e.g.
http://www.webreference.com/tools/browser/javascript.html

window.history

h = window.history;

alert ("You have " h.items " item in your navigation history");

window.status

can read or change the "status bar" (at bottom of window)

window.status = "cool website";

E.g. following code shows how to trigger status bar change when user moves the mouse over a link (by default most browsers will not allow this).

<a href="http://yoursite.org/"> onmouseover="status='Consult this'; return true;">Your site</a>

window.print()

Sends content of window to printer

window.print();

Example 5-1: Information about the navigator

navigator-props.html

<html xmlns = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

 <head>

  <title>The navigator Object</title>

  <script type = "text/javascript">

    <![CDATA[

    function start () {

      var output1 = "Hello, your "   navigator.appName
   " navigator has the following properties <br/>";

      document.writeln(output1);

      var output2 = "<ul>";

      output2  = "<li>Navigator Application Name: "   navigator.appName

   "</li>";

      output2  = "<li>Version = "   navigator.appVersion
   "</li>";

      output2  = "<li>User agent = "   navigator.userAgent
   "</li>";

      output2  = "<li>Code Name = "   navigator.appCodeName

   "</li>";

      output2  = "</ul>";

      document.writeln(output2);

      if (navigator.javaEnabled()) document.write("<li>Java works (enabled)");

      else document.write("<li>Java doesn't work");

]]>

    </script>

  </head>

  <body onload = "start()"> </body>

</html>

Example 5-2: Redirect to page according to navigator

- File: navigator.html (this script is a bit too simple for real world use)

<html xmlns = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

  <head>

    <title>The navigator Object</title>

    <script type = "text/javascript">

     function start() {

      alert ("Your Navigator is "   navigator.appName
   ", Version "

                                  navigator.appVersion.substring()
 );

      if ( navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer
" ) {

         if ( navigator.appVersion.substring( 1, 0 ) >= "4" )

            document.location = "newIEversion.html";

         else document.location = "oldIEversion.html";

      else

      document.location = "NSversion.html";

    </script>

  </head>

    <body onload = "start()">

    <p>Redirecting your browser to the appropriate page,

      please wait...</p>

  </body> </html>

http://www.webreference.com/tools/browser/javascript.html

(rather use a professional script like this)

6. Collections and creation of elements

To understand coode in this chapter you need some training in programming (which we don't provide here)
Therefore, just try to grasp some very abstract principles given in class and try to copy/paste some code with only very minor modifications ....

6.1 Collections

Instead of dealing with just one single object, you may want to write a script that can deal with several objects at the same time. E.g:
- all objects that have the same "name" attribute (only few HTML elements can have a name attribute)
- all elements of list
- all titles (h2) of a page

Example 6-1: Emphasize child elements

This code will hightlight contents of li elements within an ol or ul HTML element that has id="important"
emphasize-collection.html

<html xmlns = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

   <head>

      <title>Collections</title>

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      <script type = "text/javascript">

         function doit()

            var list = document.getElementById("important");

            var list_els = list.getElementsByTagName("li")
 
 ;

            // deal with each of the subelements

            for (var i = 0; i < list_els.length; i  ) {

                // if (list_els[i].nodeType == 1)

                list_els[i].style.color = "red";

      </script>

   </head>

   <body>

    <form>

      <p><input value="Highlight important things" type="button" onclick="doit();
">

      </p>

    </form>

Â

    <p>Welcome to our <strong>Web</strong> page!</p>

    <div></div>

    <p>Here we have list of important things:</p>

    <ul id="important">

      <li>This is important</li>

      <li>This is quite important</li>

      <li>This is also important</li>

    </ul>

    <p>Here we have list of less important things:</p>

    <ul>

      <li>This is less important</li>

      <li>This is not so important</li>

      <li>This ain't important either</li>

    </ul>

   </body>

</html>

6.2 Tree walking

Tree walking means to look at an element (for starters) and then examine its children, the children of children etc.
We start using "real" algorithms here which are not easy to understand. However, you may take this code and just change a few things in order to fit it to your purpose. Make sure to change only 1-2 things
We also introduce here the concept of functions that take arguments . Basically, we can call a function and give it information it has to deal with.

[dyn-html.html#0_79242 exemple Tree walking: Collect element names]

- This is fairly uninteresting code since it will only display HTML elements used in a document. Just copy/paste all the javascript code and the input button if you want to see it in action in one of your pages.

[dyn-html.html#0_39913 exemple Tree walking: Change color style]

- Copy the whole script section in the head plus the lines with the input buttons. Just view the source of the html page (tree-walking2.html). It's all in there for you to grab ...
- Decide which elements in your HTML text you wish to highlight and add a class attribute to each of these, e.g. something like:

<p class="important"
>

- Change the class attribute value from "important" to whatever you wish, but don't forget to change the argument when calling the do_document function, e.g. if the CSS class you wish to highlight is " cool ":

<input type=button onClick="do_document('cool
','red
');" value="Highlight">

- You may add as many input buttons you like, but of course there should be a corresponding css class and a color .

Example 6-2: Tree walking: Collect element names

tree-walking.html

var node_list = "";

function do_document
 () {

      // call the mark_tags function with argument "body of the document"

      mark_tags

(document.body
);

      alert ("This text has the following elements: "   node_list);

Â

function mark_tags

(node
) {

    // Check if n is an Element Node

    if (node.nodeType == 1 /*Node.ELEMENT_NODE*/)  {

	// Append the node name to the list

	node_list  = node.nodeName   " ";

	// Let's see if there are children

	if (node.hasChildNodes()) {

	    // Now get all children of n

	    var children = node.childNodes;

	    // Loop through the children

	    for(var i=0; i < children.length; i  ) {

                mark_tags(children[i]);      // Recurse on each one

	    }	}   } }

</script>

</head><body>

   <h1>Tree walking</h1>

    <input type=button onClick="do_document()
 
 ;" value="Show body node names">

Example 6-3: Tree walking: Change color style

tree-walking2.html

<script>

Â

 function do_document (css_class,color) {

      mark_tags(document.body,css_class,color);

Â

 function mark_tags(node,css_class
,color

) {

   // Check if n is an Element Node

   if (node.nodeType == 1 /*Node.ELEMENT_NODE*/)  {

	// Highlight if needed

    if (node.getAttribute("class") == css_class)

       node.style.color = color;

	// Let's see if there are children

	if (node.hasChildNodes()) {

	    // Now get all children of node

	    var children = node.childNodes;

	    // Loop through the children

	    for(var i=0; i < children.length; i  ) {

                // Recurse on each child

                mark_tags(children[i],css_class,color);

	    } 	}}

</script>

</head>

Â

<body>

    <h1>Tree walking</h1>

    <input type=button onClick="do_document('important
','red
');"

           value="Highlight important stuff">

    <input type=button onClick="do_document('boring
','grey
');"

    value="Highlight boring stuff">

.....

   <p class="boring
">Let's hope you enjoy this</p>

   <p class="important
">If you want to reuse this code:</p>

.....

Â

Example 6-4: Tree walking: Change any style

tree-walking3.html
Students who wish to change other style properties may look at this code ...
Implementation of a do_document(css_class,style_value,style_property) function.
E.g.

do_document('boring','none','display')

would change the display property of elements with class="boring" to none (hide elements)

6.3 Creation of elements

Creation of new HTML elements is somewhat hairy (unless you use the innerHTML method which is less standard and doesn't give you the same power)
You have to create an element with the document.createElement "factory" method.
Then you have to fill in the element, e.g. by creating a TextNode with document.createTextNode
Then only you can insert it, e.g. append an element's children with heading.appendChild();

Example 6-5: Simple append example

insert3.html

<script type="text/JavaScript">

    function insert_things () {

      // heading will contain a new "h1" element (node)

      heading = document.createElement
("h1");

      // heading_text will contain a new "text" node

      heading_text = document.createTextNode
("I love pressing buttons !");

      // we can now ask the heading node to insert the heading_text

      heading.appendChild(heading_text);

      // Finally we can ask the body to insert this at the end.

      document.body.appendChild(heading);

    </script></head>

<body>

<input type=button onClick="insert_things();" value="DoIt">

7. Animation

Animation means changing some style properties (e.g. position, size, color)
There are several sorts of animations, e.g.
- automatic animations
- animations that react to user input
Warning (again). This section requires some programming skills. If you don't have these, do not worry. The goal here is to demo that more sophisticated animation can be done with a little bit of scripting. Learning how to script takes several weeks ....

Example 7-1: User-driven object moving

move-object1.html
In the body, we use href attributes to call a moveitBy javascript function
This function is called with 3 arguments: id , move_right , move_down
- "id" is the value of and id attribute
- move_right and move_down are positive or negative numbers (pixels to shift).

Â

<div id="image" style="position: relative; left: 0px; top: 0px;">

  <img src="tecfa-affiche.gif" alt="logo">

</div>

<ul>

<li><a href="javascript:moveitBy('image',20,0)
 ;">Move by 20px (right)</a></li>

<li><a href="javascript:moveitBy('image',-20,0)
 ;">Move by 20px (left)</a></li>

The moveitBy function
- firstly takes the first argument (an id) and retrieves the div object within which we placed the image
- it then modifies "left" and "top" values of this div by adding or substracting 20.

function moveitBy
(img, x, y){

  var obj         =  document.getElementById(img);

  obj.style.left  =  parseInt(obj.style.left) x "px"

  obj.style.top   =  parseInt(obj.style.top) y "px"

The function moevitTo will reposition an object at given left/top coordinates

function moveitTo(img, x, y){

  var obj         = document.getElementById(img);

  obj.style.left  = x "px"

  obj.style.top   = y "px"

</script>

Example 7-2: Automatic font, size and position animation

dynamicposition.html
- also requires some programming skills to understand ....

<?xml version = "1.0"?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"

   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

Â

<!-- Dynamic Positioning, originally from Deitel -->

<!-- adapted to more real DOM   less difficult code by Daniel K. Schneider -->

Â

<html xmlns = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

 <head>

  <title>Dynamic Positioning</title>

Â

  <script type = "text/javascript">

   var speed = -5;

   var count = 10;

   var firstLine = "Text growing";

   var pText;

Â

  function start() {

    pText = document.getElementById("pText");

    window.setInterval( "run()", 100 );

Â

  function run() {

   count  = speed;

Â

   if ( ( count % 200 ) == 0 ) {

     speed *= -1;

     pText.style.color = ( speed < 0 ) ? "red" : "blue" ;

     firstLine =   ( speed < 0 ) ? "Text shrinking" : "Text growing";

Â

   size = count / 3 ;

   pText.style.fontSize = size   "px";

   pText.style.left = count   "px";

   pText.innerHTML = firstLine   "<br /> Font size: "   count   "px";

   // -->

</script>

   </head>

Â

<body onload = "start()">

    <p id = "pText" style = "position:absolute; left:0; font-family:serif; color:blue">

     Welcome!</p>

   </body>

</html>

Exercise

Create an HTML page that includes some elements (tags) some of which you consider important.
- Add a class attribute to these with some value, e.g.

<ul class="important"> <li>Before you start, insert the key</li> </ul>

- Implement at least one push button that will change styling of these elements
- Optional: Implement other push buttons that highlight other elements
- Look at [dyn-html.html#0_39913 exemple Tree walking: Change color style]
For those with some programming skills:
- Change other style elements, e.g. make elements visible or hidden, change position, etc.
- Look at [dyn-html.html#0_79725 exemple Tree walking: Change any style]

DHTML