Difference Between DHTML and XHTML

DHTML vs XHTML

HTML was an excellent language for displaying simple text and images on the screen. It was very easy to learn and it allowed beginners to pick the language up and start building web pages right away. But its simplicity also became its downfall as the internet grew and people were no longer satisfied with static text and image. There were a lot of technologies that were developed to address this problem, Javascript, CSS, and DOM were added to HTML and together they were known as DHTML. XHTML was developed from XML, therefore it also conforms to the XML coding standards. XHTML has become a good replacement for HTML, especially in large web pages with a lot of elements.

DHTML’s use of HTML has led to a lot of problems for most coders. As the coding needed gets bigger as the page includes more dynamic content, the flaws of HTML begins to appear. The lenient coding system of HTML means that the browser has to do a lot of deciphering on how the coder actually wanted the page to appear. Since this is largely browser dependent, different browsers usually have different outputs. Correcting the code to suit one browser would usually break it for another, and this is very frustrating to web page builders.

XHTML still operates on the same principle as HTML but removes the lenient coding practices related with it. Because XHTML conforms with XML, it does not allow coders to haphazardly place tags anywhere and wrong code results in an error. This is actually a lot harder to learn for beginners because of its very restrictive code but it benefits from being largely independent of the browser it displays in. It would then be better to code dynamic web pages using XHTML because you get better scalability and you would encounter fewer problems and browser issues as you improve your page.

DHTML did prove to be very useful at the time when no other alternative was available. But now that there are other options that can create better dynamic web pages without the problems faced by DHTML, it is no longer being used by most coders and is considered to be obsolete.

Summary:
1. XHTML is a dialect that is based on the XML language while DHTML is not a dialect or a language but a collection of other technologies
2. Both were created to provide additional features and interactivity to HTML
3. DHTML still uses HTML at its core and is plagued with HTML related problems
4. XHTML is more streamlined and easier to code with because of its conformance to XML
5. DHTML is already outdated and has been replaced by other technologies

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