Internet Explorer 5.0 has been released to developers for review. This version includes several enhancements that we'll cover in this and in the next few columns. We recommend to study these features now, even if you still don't have the new version. You may find that you are putting a lot of effort today to build capabilities that will come for free in IE 5.0. This column covers one of the more important additions to IE, DHTML Behaviors.

DHTML Behaviors lets you create a self-contained style definition for dynamic HTML elements. If you use two similarly-behaving elements in Internet Explorer 4.0x, you don't have any other choice but to define their styles separately. Version 5.0 lets you design multiple elements with a common style definition, called a Behavior. Behaviors bring to JavaScript various concepts from object-oriented languages, such as hiding of implementation details, encapsulation, code reuse, and a procedural interface.

We explain the concept of Behaviors via an example. We use the recently-ended World Cup Soccer theme to display a blinking image of a rotating soccer ball. We first implement it without Behaviors and then show how to accomplish the same task using Behaviors. We'll emphasize the advantages of doing so.

• How to emulate Behaviors with Internet Explorer 4.0x.
• How to create a scriptlet.
• How to pass data to a Behavior.
• How to pass objects to a Behavior.
• How to send events from a Behavior.
• How to share a Behavior between multiple elements.
• How to map Behavior's features with object-oriented concepts.

At this point you may also view the entire file for the Behavior scriptlet and the HTML page.