Office® XP Development with VBA

Dynamic HTML—Should You Use It?

The DHTML document object model is indeed powerful, and I have only touched the surface of its capabilities in this chapter. You should be aware, however, that this model is not always the most appropriate one to use when your custom Office application needs to manipulate Web pages. DHTML was designed primarily as a method for Web pages to be manipulated actively in real time, as they are being viewed. It is less well suited for creation and editing of Web pages, which is often what you need to do from a custom Office solution.

Remember that a Web page is a plain text file, and that VBA provides a powerful set of statements for manipulating text. I have often found that the best approach is to create or modify ...