From DHTML to DOM scripting - an example of how to replace outdated JavaScript techniques.
Those of us who Just Want To Tell Stories may occasionally beg to be excused from the gory processes of programming. Hence we've often punted when techniques were available - but costly to implement for whatever reason. AJAX was once example. But even simple page display tricks that have been around for awhile are often skipped because of the hassles of cross-browser support.

This article takes a look at the move from DHTML to DOM scripting. It's timely for me; I've just been playing with some simple dropdown/popup effects and have been utterly mystified why one borrowed script holds up and another doesn't.

"DOM scripting means trying to separate JavaScript from all the other development streams. When you use document.write() and inline event handlers like onclick, onload or onmouseover you mix HTML and JavaScript and make it harder to debug or maintain the site."

There's a lot here, and some of the organization is a little hairy. You'll want to stay tuned for the edited book: Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and AJAX. Still, a nice free intro for us confused non-programmers.