Don't you just hate those tutorials with long-winded intro's that ramble on about the author's qualifications,
family, and social life? Well, this ain't one of those. All I'm doing is teaching you JavaScript.
JavaScript is a programming language, albeit a lightweight programming language. Unless you know the
basics of using a computer, no matter how determined you are, you're not ready to learn to program.
If you can open files and programs, save stuff, find stuff on your computer, and know what the start
menu is, then things shouldn't be too difficult. If something is confusing for you, then you need
to go find a computer tutorial/book/manual and look it up.
To learn JavaScript, you'll need to know HTML and XHTML. Do a search somewhere (like Axion Networks)
and learn them, they're real easy. Then come back and learn JavaScript.
In order to learn JavaScript you'll need a few things. The first one is a browser. It's best to have
the latest browser so all of the latest parts of JavaScript work. The two major browsers are below:
Internet Explorer
Netscape Navigator
When you get seriously into making websites, you'll want both browsers to check how your pages look.
While they're downloading, go on with the tutorial.
Open up your text editor and make a basic page.
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html> |
Feel free to add a DTD and title. I left them out to save room.
Our JavaScript programming will go inside the script tags, which will go inside the head section.
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
<code>
<script>
</script>
</code>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html> |
Save your page and open it in a browser (if you haven't yet). Then just refresh it as we make changes.
The type attribute tells the browser what type of Scripting Language you're using.
<script type="text/JavaScript">
</script> |
Other people using language instead of type. It's pretty much the same, except it takes
longer to type as it's an invalid XHTML attribute.
You may have noticed that a few of my tags are missing. That's just to save room. Don't go deleting
all of your XHTML.
Now we'll make an alert.
<script type="text/JavaScript">
alert("Type some kinda message here");
</script> |
alert is a keyword. It calls up an alert. The alert has some text written on it. That
text is whatever you typed in the parenthesis (round brackets). The text must be surrounded in either
quotes ( " ) or apostrophies ( ' ), you decide which you'll use. I explain
why in the JavaScript Variables tutorial. Each line of JavaScript code ends in a semi-colon ( ; ),
except on certain lines (explained in other tutorials.
Before you go on, a few things about JavaScript:
-
JavaScript is not Java. Java is much harder (but very powerfull) to learn).
-
We use JavaScript to write scripts. Scripts are mini-programs like menu's, form validators and page
effects.
-
JavaScript is slightly different depending on which browser you use. But the core language is the
same for both browsers, that what my tutorials teach.
-
There are two types of JavaScript: Client-Side, and Server-Side. Client-Side works in your pages,
Server-Side works with the server. My tutorials teach Client-Side. Best to learn Client-Side JavaScript
before you learn Server-Side JavaScript.
-
JavaScript is a good language for those newbies to learn who have no programming experience. It's
easy, doesn't make you do the complicated stuff other languages like Java and Perl do, and will
teach you the basics of programming that are used in every other language.
-
Programming doesn't care about english grammer. It only cares about syntax. That's the rules you
need to follow when programming, such as ending certain lines in JavaScript with semi-colons rather
than periods.
-
In programming, a line of text is called a string (like the string we used as the message for our
alert).
JavaScript comments can be used to remind you of stuff, or help other reading your code to understand
it.
<script type="text/JavaScript">
//Hello Vegeta, how are you?
</script> |
JavaScript one-line comments begin with //. The entire line is commented out.
Multi-line comments will comment our more than one line:
<script type="text/JavaScript">
/*
Hello Vegeta,
how are you?*/
</script> |
JavaScript multi-line comments begin with /* and end with */ with everything
in between being commented out.
Not everybody has the latest browsers. Old browsers don't support JavaScript. They just print your
programming out as if it were normal text. So we comment our code out with an XHTML comment.
<script type="text/JavaScript"><!--
//--></script> |
A one-line JavaScript comment is also added in.
We just put our programming in the script section like normal.
Now that you know the basics of JavaScript, you can move on to variables.