You don't need to spend loads of money to be able to add JavaScript to your pages. To be able to write and test JavaScript you need five programs. While there are programs you can buy to satisfy one of these requirements there are also lots of free alternatives. The other four programs you need are all available as free downloads but one of them only runs on Windows.

Tools for Making JavaScript

For those brand new to the idea of using JavaScript the steps required just to be able to use a script that someone else has written are not necessarily all that obvious. Even though I have step by step instructions with all the scripts I offer that people can copy from this site some people have managed to have trouble through misunderstanding those instructions. For example not knowing how to save supplied content as a separate file. For those people I have now added this extra step by step guide to how to perform some of the simple tasks that those completely new to JavaScript may not know how to do when following instructions on how to install a pre-written script into their web page.

Using Pre-written JavaScript \

Control how your regular expressions try to match the content

Sometimes you want to find the longest possible matching string and sometimes you want the shortest possible matching string. The ninth tutorial on Regular Expressions covers how to set the pattern to return the one you want.

Greedy, Reluctant and Possessive

JavaScript and JScript are two different programming languages. JavaScript runs in most web browsers with the most popularly used exception being Internet Explorer. JScript can run in Internet Explorer as well as a variety of other places. Most JavaScript can also run as JScript (and you can use feature sensing to handle those parts where different code is required). JScript provides lots of features that do not have a JavaScript equivalent and so those features should not be used for web pages.

Javascript and JScript