JavaScript and HTML Text

JavaScript is a client-side scripting language that runs entirely inside the web browser. To call it up, you place your JavaScript code between opening <script> and closing </script> HTML tags. A typical HTML 4.01 “Hello World” document using JavaScript might look like Example 13-1.

Example 13-1. “Hello World” displayed using JavaScript
<html>
    <head><title>Hello World</title></head>
    <body>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            document.write("Hello World")
        </script>
        <noscript>
            Your browser doesn't support or has disabled JavaScript
        </noscript>
    </body>
</html>

Note

You may have seen web pages that use the HTML tag <script language="javascript">, but that usage has now been deprecated. This example uses the more recent and preferred <script type="text/javascript">.

Within the <script> tags is a single line of JavaScript code that uses the JavaScript equivalent of the PHP echo or print commands, document.write. As you’d expect, it simply outputs the supplied string to the current document, where it is displayed.

You may have also noticed that, unlike with PHP, there is no trailing semicolon (;). This is because a newline serves the same purpose as a semicolon in JavaScript. However, if you wish to have more than one statement on a single line, you do need to place a semicolon after each command except the last one. And of course, if you wish, you can add a semicolon to the end of every statement and your JavaScript will work fine.

The other thing to note in ...

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