I've gotten into this discussion with a friend of mine several times and strangely I'm still not exactly sure of my position on the topic. My buddy works on some very media centric sites which deliver on demand videos, etc, and so he uses dhtml a lot to make the interface faster and more interactive. My background is much more simple and geared toward the server side because most sites I work on don't have any real need for fancy bells and whistles that require dhtml. He tries to convince me that dhtml is the wave of the future and that everyone is going to be doing it soon. I represent the counter-point that sites which don't *need* dhtml won't use it and that includes most sites on the web.

I totally acknowledge that sites like google maps have used dhtml brilliantly to provide functionality above and beyond what was possible before, however I also believe that applications like google maps are particularly well suited for a more elaborate and interactive experience which dhtml can provide. On most websites I still find that typical uses of dhtml are just fluff and hardly provide a leap in real functionality and in some cases the dhtml just gets in the way and breaks things which probably should have been done in html. It's a tough call, I definitely see some great potential in the combination of dhtml and xml, however I would still be reluctant to rely on it for anything.

I am curious what others think about this. what is dhtml's place on the web? what are other good examples of dhtml being really effective?