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JavaScript: The Easy Way

© Krissi Danielsson

I hope I'm not going out on a limb when I say that HTML is not very confusing. If you disagree, please let me know, but all-in-all it's just not that hard to learn where to put a paragraph tag or what the difference is between the title in the head tags or the title that displays at the top of your page.

However, if you've actually experimented at all with web design, maybe you found yourself wishing you knew a little more than just HTML. After all, more and more web pages have animated graphics, pop-up windows...and all these neat things that you just can't do with a markup language. But, if you're like me, maybe you get a little intimidated when someone mentions programming.

JavaScript is one of the most interesting technologies to hit the web. It's a pretty simple programming language which you can type right into your HTML files, and it'll work on your page. It can give you popup windows or form validation without much trouble. (In fact, it only takes one line to make a simple popup window.) JavaScript is almost as easy to learn as HTML, and can really spice up your page once you learn how to do it right.

But where can you learn? And what does this have to do with Shareware?

JavaScript for the Total Nonprogrammer is a really neat JavaScript tutorial which is available on the web. Created by a computer programming teacher, it's extremely well-written with the non-techie person in mind. (Well, almost. If you weren't at least part techie, you wouldn't be designing a web page. :-) It gives excellent examples, and explains the technical parts of JavaScript in a very easy-to-understand tone. Chances are, you won't get too confused. The best part is that it's free to look at online, and if you want to download it to read at your leisure, it only costs $7.75. It's a great value for a low price. This one gets a rating of 5 of 5 stars.

Then, after you learn JavaScript, if you get really good at it and want to make it so that no one can steal your code just by clicking "view code" on your page, you can download JavaScript Scrambler and register it for only $10.

Lastly, if you're in a hurry and don't want to spend the time to learn to program, you can get SmartScript from Download.com for only a $5 registration fee. It will generate the scripts for you.