A scripting language developed by Netscape to enable Web authors to design interactive sites. Although it shares many of the features and structures of the full Java language, it was developed independently. JavaScript can interact with HTML source code, enabling Web authors to spice up their sites with dynamic content. JavaScript is endorsed by a number of software companies and is an open language that anyone can use without purchasing a license. It is supported by recent browsers from Netscape and Microsoft, though Internet Explorer supports only a subset, which Microsoft calls Jscript.

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JavaScript is the Netscape-developed object scripting language used in millions of web pages and server applications worldwide. Netscape's JavaScript is a superset of the ECMA-262 Edition 3 (ECMAScript) standard scripting language, with only mild differences from the published standard.

Contrary to popular misconception, JavaScript is not "Interpretive Java". In a nutshell, JavaScript is a dynamic scripting language supporting prototype based object construction. The basic syntax is intentionally similar to both Java and C++ to reduce the number of new concepts required to learn the language. Language constructs, such as if statements, for and while loops, and switch and try ... catch blocks function the same as in these languages (or nearly so.)

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JavaScript can function as both a procedural and an object oriented language. Objects are created programmatically in JavaScript, by attaching methods and properties to otherwise empty objects at run time, as opposed to the syntactic class definitions common in compiled languages like C++ and Java. Once an object has been constructed it can be used as a blueprint (or prototype) for creating similar objects.

JavaScript's dynamic capabilities include runtime object construction, variable parameter lists, function variables, dynamic script creation (via eval), object introspection (via for ... in), and source code recovery (JavaScript programs can decompile function bodies back into their source text)

Intrinsic objects are Number, String, Boolean, Date, RegExp, and Math.

For a more in depth discussion of JavaScript programming follow the Language and Scripting Resources links in the table below.