Creating a Website: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition

Scripts on the Web

JavaScript is a truly powerful tool. If you’re a die-hard alpha nerd who likes to program your TiVo to talk to your BlackBerry, you’ll enjoy long nights of JavaScript coding. However, if you don’t like to lie awake wondering what var howMany = (trueTop>1?“s” :“”); really means, you’ll probably be happier letting someone else do the heavy lifting.

If you fall into the nonprogrammer camp, this chapter has some good news. The Web is flooded with free JavaScript. Most of the time, these scripts include step-bystep instructions that explain where to put the functions, what elements to use in your page, and how to hook your elements up to functions using events.

However, there’s a downside to free JavaScript. As you learned at the beginning of this chapter, JavaScript dates back to the early days of the Internet, and many Java-Script sites are nearly as old. As a result, they may feature garish formatting, outof-date browser compatibility information (for example, they might warn you that a script doesn’t work on the long-deceased Netscape browser), and old approaches that have been replaced with more modern techniques. Some JavaScript sites are also chock full of ads.

If these issues haven’t discouraged you, here are some good starting points for your JavaScript search:

• www.dynamicdrive.com

  This site provides a set of respectable scripts that emphasize Dynamic HTML. Some scripts create exotic effects, like glowing green letters that tumble down the page, Matrix-style.