Javascript
what the heck is it? Is it a really difficult programming language that casual web designers should be afraid of? What is it used for? Hopefully we'll be able to answer these questions for you and more in this tutorial
JavaScript
has been around for several years. The main benefit of Javascript is to add additional interaction between the website and its visitors with just a little extra work by the web developer. Javascript allows industrious web masters to get more out of their website than HTML and CSS can provide.
By definition, JavaScript is a client-side scripting language. This means the web surfer's browser will be running the script. The opposite of client-side is server-side, which occurs in a language like PHP. PHP scripts are run by the web hosting server.
There are many uses (and abuses!) for the powerful JavaScript language. Here are a few things that you may or may not have seen in your web surfing days:
- Clocks
- Mouse Trailers (an animation that follows your mouse when you surf a site)
- Drop Down Menus shows
- Alert Messages display
- Popup Windows open
- HTML Form Data Validation