Browser-enhanced clients enable applications to take advantage of the technologies inherent in a particular browser to gain maximum functionality and richness. The reality is that many corporations and organizations standardize to a single browser. Developers who write applications for a corporation's intranet can thus program to a particular browser's features. With technologies like dynamic HTML (DHTML) and scripting languages, developers can create applications with functional Web-based interfaces for data entry or reporting without using custom controls or applets.
DHTML is based on the W3C-standard Document Object Model, which makes all Web-page elements programmable objects. Think of DHTML as a "programmable" HTML. Contents of the HTML document, including style and positioning information, can be modified dynamically by script code embedded in the page. Thus, scripts can change the style, content, and structure of a Web page without having to refresh the Web page from the Web server. This means that the client does not have to repeatedly return to the Web server for changes in display, resulting in increased network performance. Unlike Java applets or Microsoft® ActiveX® controls, DHTML has no dependencies on the underlying virtual machine or operating system. For clients without DHTML support, the content appears in a gracefully degraded form.