I read Building Dynamic HTML GUIs recently and was disappointed. I bought it for the three chapters on information design, but those are mostly of survey of existing works, including an overly fundamental introduction to the field. The intention was great, but so much time is spent talking about command lines and ancient user interface history that it never progresses to material we really need. This may be a useful approach for an HTML book, or even an introductory JavaScript book, but I think someone diving into DHTML is more knowledgable and should be treated as such.
It’s a shame, because designers and programmers need to have a better understanding of 1) what’s possible with DHTML, 2) what the performance tradeoffs are (e.g. moving layers suck up processor cycles, loading hidden layers sucks bandwidth…), and 3) all the usual usability concerns that must be re-addressed now that stuff is flying around the screen and what not.