Javascript is a great programming language like perl. It is a unique language as it runs with the browser as OS or VM.
In this article we will look at the features of javascript and the general picture. In the case of javascript the context matters more than anything else. Javascript cannot run in an OS. It's OS is the browser. And there is no better debugging tool than firebug with the firefox browser like gdb on UNIX. Javascript is an interpreted language like perl or python and you can install a command line interpreter called spidermonkey on linux. Spidermonkey will give you a js prompt. js js> So you can test out all your data structure doubts and function doubts using this. But only the browser environment with firebug can give you real development testing. spidermonkey has limitations. If you are not understanding what I am saying then don't worry. You need to have some experience in web development to follow what I am talking. Now let us look at some general concepts which everyone can follow. A web programming language , particularly web 2.0 like Ajax or jQuery or JSON/XML requires a thorough knowledge of the context; ie, web components. Those are the browser, web server, DOM(Document Object Model) which is the XML/HTML view of the web page and of course javascript and CSS. This is not an easy topic and cannot be covered in one article but we will see whatever can be covered. Basically a GUI development toolkit will only be concerned about the particular OS the programming model for GUI development and the toolkit itself. In the case of javascript based GUI development javascript is not actually a GUI toolkit. jQuery is a javascript toolkit/library. But the toolkit for GUI is composed of CSS for styling/beauty, HTML DOM for the structure and skeleton and the dynamic behavior is dictated by javascript and Ajax. Ajax is nothing but plainjane CGI with some pepper; it can be called without reloading the page. Nothing but new age CGI. And JSON helps you obtain nested data structures(array of arrays) from a different server other than your web server. In fact today nearly all web development is done using JSON. But I don't use it in my products' web panels. In all this GUI work you will need to do a lot of backend CGI work which I do using perl and all browser end programming using jQuery and javascript. But to do this you need to understand HTML, CSS and DOM. There is a lot of learning to do before one can program effectively on the web. -Girish -- Gayatri Hitech http://gayatri-hitech.com _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
