Internet Explorer 5.0 Preview, Part III: Final Thoughts - Doc JavaScript

A Final Word

In this column we continued our previous column, More on DHTML Behaviors. We have focused in this column on four of Internet Explorer 5.0's built-in Behaviors: favorite, history, snapshot, and userdata. These Behaviors enable persistence, which is a very powerful capability for every programming environment. We have used the Connect Three game, to show you the limitations of pre-5.0 versions of Internet Explorer, and how version 5.0 solves them. Internet Explorer 5.0 allows you to persist a Web page through the Favorites list, Back and Forward clicks, Save As operation, closing of the browser window, and filling a form. When making one of the operations above in version 4.x, the user's dynamic changes are lost without recovery. We have also described in detail what kind of changes you need to make to your page in order to support persistence. After reading this column you should know how to implement each one of the four Behaviors.

In this column you have learned:

• How to recognize the benefits of persistence Behaviors.
• How to write the Connect Three board game.
• How to identify the limitations of Internet Explorer 4.x that persistence removes from version 5.0..
• How to use the saveFavorite persistence Behavior.
• How to use the saveHistory persistence Behavior.
• How to use the saveSnapshot persistence Behavior.
• How to use the userData persistence Behavior.
• How to use the persistence Behavior's methods and events.

We have also shown you the codes for the non-persistent Connect Three board game, its Favorites-persistent version, its History-persistent version, and its user-data-persistent version.