Current Topic: There are many methods to choose from when trying to serve 'Dynamically Generated' and/or 'Context Sensitive' web pages. Some are completely visible to the user agent (network), some are hugely time consuming and some present security weaknesses. Understanding which method is proper for a particular objective is often a difficult choice and is sometimes further limited by the host server resources.
There Are Many Scripting Methods For Creating 'Web Pages On The Fly'...
There are only two basic categories of scripting. Server side and Client side. Both of these methods have numerous options to choose from. This means the programmer must be able to decide which side the script is pertinent to. It is the source of the Dynamic information that usually determines this.
Dynamically Generating Pages At The Server Side...
Let's say... A page describes information from a database on the server. The only way a Client (web browser) can display this is if the information is already coded into the HTML. It therefore needs to be generated by the server. This is typically accomplished by Pre-Processing the request through essentially a filter (perprocessor). The requested (GET) page is fed into the filter (usually a server extension) and the output is what is returned to the Client.
Simple Animation Using Common Style Sheets (CSS)...
CSS or Common Style Sheets represent a set of layout and style properties for each display item through it's container class. Additionally different styles can be assigned to different states like 'hover' or 'visited'. Each of these can manipulate borders, font, position, background color or image, etc. This method is limited and usually used only as an aid for client navigation and feedback.
Hover the mouse cursor over the following items for some examples of what CSS alone can do.
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Admittedly this method presents a very limited feature set however there are current extensions that add numerous common 'animation', 'transform', effects which are quite 'spiffy' but still not very interactive. None the less many of the effects offered by CSS can replace the need for 'heavy burden' plugins like Flash when all the target is trying to do is attract a click. With a much simpler job placed on client rendering (browser performance) as well. A browsers page space must always be considered a shared resource and hogging it makes you look stupid.
Javascript And The Document Object Model (DOM)...
Clients (browsers) also need a way to interact with the page and or the server. That's where scripting comes in.
Web Pages Can Also Be Manipulated Inside The Client (Browser)...
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