CeaRO Corporation

Section 5 - JavaScript

JavaScript is a programming language. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Java programming language. The 'Java' in its name was more of a marketing plot. Its offical name is ECMAScript and it is standardized.

It is often said of JavaScript that it adds behaviour to otherwise static web content.

Scripting languages are often considered as the poor relatives of true programming languages, slower and less powerful. Nowadays, with processing speeds what they are the 'slower' speed largely became irrelevant. And anybody who looked at the source code of a professional elaborate JavaScript using website must realize that JavaScript is indeed very powerful, with a level of complexity that goes hand in hand with it.

There are a lot of things we can do with JavaScript. Even when we limit ourselves to Client-Side JavaScript. Two ways JavaScript is often used, are to manipulate the CSS and to process form input. There are also a lot of 'ready to use' JavaScript methods and libraries available, which often encapsulate the more complex code in easier to use simple function calls, thus providing the power without the hassle. We will get back to that when talking about jQuery and AJAX in later sections.

But first something completely different. You will not quite understand it right now. But in the next session we are going to use jQuery and let it demonstrate itself by confirming it is loaded and ready for use, helped by the same JavaScript code that on the next line here is saying that it isn't!

JavaScript is telling you that jQuery is NOT loaded!