Inside Technique : Dynamic HTML Ads
By Scott Isaacs

Dynamic HTML can revolutionize the way you build advertisements. Interactive, low-bandwidth banner advertisements can quickly and easily be created. Our two test ads that we were using to promote the book, Inside Dynamic HTML, and the Inside Techniques section of this site are not animated GIFs. Instead, they are HTML and Script packaged as a scriptlet.

The model behind building a dynamic advertisement is very similar to creating a GIF, but an HTML file is used instead of an image. The banner is embedded on the page as a scriptlet using the OBJECT tag. The OBJECT Tag can reference a HTML file that completely contains all its behavior and navigation information.

An object tag is used over embedding the script directly into the page to ensure the advertisement does not conflict with any of your own code. This is one of the key benefits of the scriptlet component technology is that your advertisement is encapsulated and protected from colliding with any other code on the page.

The most immediate benefit to using HTML is lots of interaction and behavior can be defined with a very small file. By using Dynamic HTML, the ad can even interact with the user either directly or indirectly. For example, move the mouse over the banner ad below (this ad will not navigate anywhere):

In the above ad, when the mouse moves over the banner, a message is displayed to the user. This is an example of indirect interactivity. A direct action may involve the user clicking and playing through a scenario, or even offering multiple options that take the user to different locations. The benefit is that the advertisement is completely encapsulated and does not require any special authoring by the content provider consuming the ad.

Next we walk you through the steps to create a DHTML Advertisement.

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