Dynamic web page

Dynamic web pages are web sites that are generated at the time of access by a user or change as a result of interaction with the user. Dynamic web pages are a fundamental part of Web 2.0 which facilitates information sharing across multiple websites.

Client side scripting

Using client-side scripting to change interface behaviors within a specific web page, in response to mouse or keyboard actions or at specified timing events. In this case, the dynamic behavior occurs within the presentation. The Client-side content is generated on the user's local computer system.

Such web pages use presentation technology called rich interfaced pages. Client-side scripting languages like JavaScript or ActionScript, used for Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and Flash technologies respectively, are frequently used to orchestrate media types (sound, animations, changing text, etc.) of the presentation. The scripting also allows use of remote scripting, a technique by which the DHTML page requests additional information from a server, using a hidden Frame, XMLHttpRequests, or a Web service.

The first "widespread used" version of JavaScript was 1996 (with Netscape 3 an ECMAscript standard).

Server-side scripting

A program running on the web server (server-side scripting) is used to change the web content on various web pages, or to adjust the sequence of or reload of the web pages. Server responses may be determined by such conditions as data in a posted HTML form, parameters in the URL, the type of browser being used, the passage of time, or a database or server state.

Such web pages are often created with the help of server-side languages such as ASP, ColdFusion, Perl, PHP, and other languages. These server-side languages often use the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) to produce dynamic web pages. Two notable exceptions are ASP.NET and JSP, which reuse CGI concepts in their APIs but actually dispatch all web requests into a shared virtual machine.

Dynamic web pages are often cached when there are few or no changes expected and the page is anticipated to receive considerable amount of web traffic that would create slow load times for the server if it had to generate the pages on the fly for each request.

Combination

Ajax is a web development technique for dynamically interchanging content which sends a request to the server for data. The server returns the requested data which is then formatted by a client side script. This technique reduces server load time because the client does not request the entire webpage to be regenerated by the server's language parser; only the content that will change is transmitted. Google Maps is an example of a web application that uses Ajax techniques and database.

History

It is difficult to be precise about "dynamic web page beginnings" or chronology, because the precise concept makes sense only after the "widespread development of web pages": HTTP has been in use since 1990, HTML, as standard, since 1996. The web browsers explosion started with 1993's Mosaic. It is obvious, however, that the concept of dynamically driven websites predates the internet, and in fact HTML. For example, in 1990, before the general public use of the internet, a dynamically driven remotely accessed menu system was implemented by Susan Biddlecomb, at the University of Southern California BBS on a 16 line TBBS system with TDBS add-on.

See also

• Common Gateway Interface
• Deep web
• Rich Internet application
• Static web page
• TBBS
• Web template system

References

• "The Information Revolution", J. R. Okin. ISBN 0976385740. Ed. Ironbound Press, 2005. 350 pp.
• "Learning VBScript", P. Lomax. ISBN 1565922476. Ed. O'Reilly, 1997. sec. C13.