JavaScript Intro

What is JavaScript?

• computer programming language
• scripting language
  
  — Wikipedia

JavaScript is a …

What is it Really?

JavaScript is the Language of the Web.

It allows us to write scripts much like a movie or a play, but in an interactive fashion.

We can detail how elements will behave on a web page. But not only…

What is it Used for?

Most commonly used to define behavior web applications.
User interactions, manipulating the browser, communicate
asynchronously, and alter the document content that is
displayed.

It is also being used in server-side programming (with
Node.js), game development and the creation of desktop and
mobile applications.

— Wikipedia

JavaScript History

• 1995: At Netscape, Brendan Eich created "JavaScript".
             Originally developed under the name Mocha,
             officially called LiveScript, then called JavaScript                                                                                            (marketing trick)
• 1996: Microsoft releases "JScript", a port for IE3.
• 1997: JavaScript was standardized in the "ECMAScript" spec.
• 2005: "AJAX" was coined and the web 2.0 age begins.
• 2006: jQuery 1.0 was released.
• 2010: Node.JS was released.
• 2015: ECMAScript 6 was released.

Common User Interactions

• Click
• Hover
• Scroll
• Drag & Drop
• Tap
• Swipe
• Pinch
• Keyboard keys
• Mouse movements

Common browser manipulations

• Update the visual content of the document UI
• Change the URL address
• Navigate the browser History  (back/forward)
• Save and retrieve data locally (Cookies, Local Storage...)
• Get the user's location
• Offline support using web workers

Communicate with remote servers

• Send data to, and get data from a server,
  without reloading the page - AJAX
• Real-time communication with servers using Web Sockets