Java Script

What is JavaScript?

JavaScript is a platform-independent,event-driven, interpreted client-side scripting and programming language developed by Netscape Communications Corp. and Sun Microsystems.

How is JavaScript different from Java?
JavaScript was developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape; Java was developed at Sun Microsystems. While the two languages share some common syntax, they were developed independently of each other and for different audiences. Java is a full-fledged programming language tailored for network computing; it includes hundreds of its own objects, including objects for creating user interfaces that appear in Java applets (in Web browsers) or standalone Java applications. In contrast, JavaScript relies on whatever environment it's operating in for the user interface, such as a Web document's form elements.

What’s relationship between JavaScript and ECMAScript?
ECMAScript is yet another name for JavaScript (other names include LiveScript). The current JavaScript that you see supported in browsers is ECMAScript revision 3.

How do you submit a form using Javascript?
Use document.forms[0].submit();
(0 refers to the index of the form – if you have more than one form in a page, then the first one has the index 0, second has index 1 and so on).

How do we get JavaScript onto a web page?
You can use several different methods of placing javascript in you pages.
You can directly add a script element inside the body of page.
1. For example, to add the "last updated line" to your pages, In your page text, add the following:

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

yada, yada, yada.

(Note: the first comment, "<--" hides the content of the script from browsers that don't understand javascript. The "// -->" finishes the comment. The "//" tells javascript that this is a comment so javascript doesn't try to interpret the "-->". If your audience has much older browsers, you should put this comments inside your javascript. If most of your audience has newer browsers, the comments can be omitted. For brevity, in most examples here the comments are not shown. )
The above code will look like this on Javascript enabled browsers,
2. Javascript can be placed inside the element
Functions and global variables typically reside inside the element.





Javascript can be referenced from a separate file
Javascript may also a placed in a separate file on the server and referenced from an HTML page. (Don't use the shorthand ending "

How to read and write a file using javascript?
I/O operations like reading or writing a file is not possible with client-side javascript. However , this can be done by coding a Java applet that reads files for the script.

How to detect the operating system on the client machine?
In order to detect the operating system on the client machine, the navigator.appVersion
string (property) should be used.

How can JavaScript make a Web site easier to use? That is, are there certain JavaScript techniques that make it easier for people to use a Web site?
JavaScript's greatest potential gift to a Web site is that scripts can make the page more immediately interactive, that is, interactive without having to submit every little thing to the server for a server program to re-render the page and send it back to the client. For example, consider a top-level navigation panel that has, say, six primary image map links into subsections of the Web site. With only a little bit of scripting, each map area can be instructed to pop up a more detailed list of links to the contents within a subsection whenever the user rolls the cursor atop a map area. With the help of that popup list of links, the user with a scriptable browser can bypass one intermediate menu page. The user without a scriptable browser (or who has disabled JavaScript) will have to drill down through a more traditional and time-consuming path to the desired content.

What are JavaScript types?
Number, String, Boolean, Function, Object, Null, Undefined.

How do you convert numbers between different bases in JavaScript?
Use the parseInt() function, that takes a string as the first parameter, and the base as a second parameter. So to convert hexadecimal 3F to decimal, use parseInt ("3F", 16);

How to create arrays in JavaScript?
We can declare an array like this
var scripts = new Array();
We can add elements to this array like this

scripts[0] = "PHP";
scripts[1] = "ASP";
scripts[2] = "JavaScript";
scripts[3] = "HTML";

Now our array scrips has 4 elements inside it and we can print or access them by using their index number. Note that index number starts from 0. To get the third element of the array we have to use the index number 2 . Here is the way to get the third element of an array.
document.write(scripts[2]);
We also can create an array like this
var no_array = new Array(21, 22, 23, 24, 25);

How do you target a specific frame from a hyperlink?
Include the name of the frame in the target attribute of the hyperlink. >My Page