Chapter 13. JavaScript in Web Browsers

The first part of this book described the core JavaScript language. Part II moves on to JavaScript as used within web browsers, commonly called client-side JavaScript.[*] Most of the examples you’ve seen so far, while legal JavaScript code, have no particular context; they are JavaScript fragments that run in no specified environment. This chapter provides that context. It starts with an overview of the web browser programming environment. Next, it discusses how to actually embed JavaScript code within HTML documents, using <script> tags, HTML event handler attributes, and JavaScript URLs. These sections on embedding JavaScript are followed by a section that explains the client-side JavaScript execution model: how and when web browsers run JavaScript code. Next are sections that cover three important topics in JavaScript programming: compatibility, accessibility, and security. The chapter concludes with an short description of web-related embeddings of the JavaScript language other than client-side JavaScript.

When JavaScript is embedded in a web browser, the browser exposes a powerful and diverse set of capabilities and allows them to be scripted. The chapters that follow Chapter 13 each focus on one major area of client-side JavaScript functionality:

  • Chapter 14, Scripting Browser Windows, explains how JavaScript can script web browser windows by, for example, opening and closing windows, displaying dialog boxes, causing windows to load ...

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