JavaScript experts/clowns may help and/or hinder you with these articles and opinions.

Paige Turner is the JavaScript Weenie and hosts this fascinating resource. In addition to articles and opinion, we have discussion groups and mailing lists populated by rabid JavaScript proponents. With a bit of luck one of them or Paige herself will answer your perplexing JavaScript questions.

 See JavaScript In Action

• Amazing HTML
  This is our amusement park ride. If you want to see DHTML and advanced JavaScript in action, just fasten your seatbelt and click through. There's no queue, barely any buttons to press, and the ride's fairly short, but there's every chance it'll raise your eyebrows.
  
  
• JavaScript Generated Patterns
  Want to see pretty patterns generated by miniscule HTML pages? Take a look at these. The files are between one and two kilobytes. The secret is that they barely contain any HTML. They use JavaScript to generate a huge, separate HTML page, which is what you see on screen.
  
  
• How to Do Easy, Cool Transitions (wipes, dissolves) in IE
  Wipes, fades, pop-ups, up-pops, dissolves, transitions. All those good things. One simple line of code pasted into a HTML page lets you add easy special effects to your Internet Explorer pages. It isn't quite JavaScript, but who cares?
  
  

 JavaScript Tutorials

• Anatomy of a JavaScript Picture Puzzle
  This simple JavaScript picture puzzle uses DHTML techniques to show individual sections of a single picture, so it doesn't need multiple graphics files for the various slices. Here's a full explanation of how the code works.
  
  
• Netscape 6: Updating Your JavaScript
  How much of your site's JavaScript do you need to change so it can be read by Netscape 6? Happily, only the complicated bits. Here's a guide to recognising how much extra work the new browser has saddled you with.
  
  
• Using JavaScript to Validate Form Entries
  JavaScript is very useful when it comes to checking HTML forms for valid entries. You can check that your visitors have filled in your forms correctly before they're transmitted over the Internet. Here's a selection of links to validation scripts and information.
  
  
• How do I use JavaScript to Pass Values from one Field, Frame or Window to Another?
  The JavaScript Weenie has heard this question so often that she's kindly put together a brief page of links to articles and scripts that should help.
  
  
• Cascading Menus
  Cascading menus are everywhere. The Start Menu in Windows is a perfect example. Here is a script that will allow you to create cascading menus in IE5 and keep a default hyperlink in place for other browsers.
  
  
• Cascading Menu Script Explained
  Ever wanted to follow a detailed walk-through of a sophisticated JavaScript program? Well get your hiking boots on and join us for a stroll through the entire length of Aaron Prenot's cascading menu script.
  
  
• Cross-browser JavaScript
  A problem that many designers face is that some JavaScript works in Internet Explorer but not in Netscape Navigator, and vice versa. Cross-Browser code is code that works in both, and preferably other less well-known browsers too.
  
  
• An Introduction To DHTML
  Where HTML and JavaScript meet they become Dynamic HTML. With DHTML, JavaScript can refer to HTML elements on a Web page and change them. Here's our introduction to this crossover area, particularly the DOM or Document Object Model, which gives useful names to HTML elements and allows JavaScript to refer to them.
  
  
• DHTML Part 2: Collections and Styles
  In this, the second of our DHTML tutorials, we get to grips with element collections held in the DOM, and dynamic use of styles. Important collections include the images, forms, links and rows collections. Using styles and DHTML we can dynamically change colors, fonts and create mouseover effects. The guide is pitched at intermediate users with a decent knowledge of JavaScript.
  
  
• DHTML Part 3: Browser Object Model
  If you can handle it, you'll find some of the most interesting things you can do to a Web page are covered by the Browser Object Model. This is the area where we can meddle with the status bar at the bottom of the browser screen, set times for animations, transfer information between frames, and go backwards and forwards in page history.
  
  
• JavaScript Tutorial: Variables and Operators Explained
  A JavaScript tutorial aimed at beginners, or intermediate users with a hangover who suddenly forget how to turn numbers into strings and increment their variables. Includes working code examples for comparison, logical, compacted and other operators.
  
  
• JavaScript Tutorial: Object Properties and Flow Controls
  The second in our series of basic JavaScript Tutorials covers variables within objects, the use of If, Else and Switch, plus loop statements including For, In, While, Break and Continue.
  
  
• JavaScript Tutorial: Functions and Classes
  With a basic grasp of variables, objects and operators, you can create many JavaScript programs. But to create efficient code, you need to learn about functions, parameters, classes and prototypes too.
  
  
• Using JavaScript To Control Forms
  HTML forms can easily be enhanced using JavaScript. Here we describe the JavaScript that can be added to an HTML form to ensure that Required Fields are filled in by the user.
  
  
• Using JavaScript To Control Forms - Part 2
  The second part of our series on using JavaScript to improve the quality of HTML forms looks at one final aspect of 'required' fields, the Select element. It also covers Regular Expressions that can be used to limit the kind of characters accepted in a field, and techniques using Hidden fields that can make received data easier to understand.
  
  
• Using JavaScript To Control Forms - Part 3
  The three techniques discussed in this final article have a common theme. They are all concerned with presenting forms, rather than validating form input. The first section looks at adding extra emphasis to form elements. We then look at intelligent forms that change their questions according to the answers given. And finally we cover dynamically changing form element attributes, for example the value of a checkbox.
  
  
• Events And JavaScript: Part 1 - Event Handling
  An introduction to attaching events to HTML elements and using JavaScript event handling. Programming Languages are often quoted as being Object-Orientated, Event-Driven Languages. Together, HTML and JavaScript provide an excellent example of this model. HTML provides the objects, and JavaScript provides the event handling capability.
  
  
• Events And JavaScript: Part 2 - Advanced Event Handling
  Our second JavaScript event tutorial looks at Advanced Event Handling. The three sections we cover here are Cancelling Events, Event Bubbling, and Mouse Capture. If your JavaScript skills are at an intermediate level and you want learn more, this is a fine place to start.
  
  
• Events And JavaScript: Part 3 - The Event Object
  Whenever an event fires, the computer places data about the event into the Event Object - for example, where the mouse pointer was on the screen at the time of the event, which mouse buttons were being pressed at the time of the event, and other useful information. This opens up possibilities for creating very intricate and complex programs.
  
  
• JavaScript Dynamic Document Creation
  Dynamic Document Creation is the creation of a Web document from within JavaScript.
  
  
• JavaScript Dynamic Document Creation in New Windows
  A second article on JDD, explaining how to open and close a new browser window and how to create dynamic content for a new window.
  
  
• Non-Graphical Rollovers for IE5
  How to use CSS and inline JavaScript to create non-graphical rollovers for Internet Explorer 5.
  
  

 JavaScript Discussion
 Groups and Mailing Lists

• The JavaScript Weenie Discussion Group
  If you have a specific Windows problem you might want to look through our Web-based JavaScript Weenie discussion group. There are some sharp scripters hanging out in these discussions but don't be afraid to ask beginners' questions.
  
  
• JavaScript Weenie Mailing List
  Share email with people trying to get their JavaScript problems sorted out. There are actually a lot of answers and people hanging out trying to help each other in this mailing list - it is not just clueless dorks screaming into the dark (although there are some of those).

 Articles

• The Case for Object Detection
  Object detection is often used in JavaScript to identify the browser type. David Blakey makes the case for a purer kind of object detection, aimed at checking the browser can cope with code that follows, but without making assumptions about its type.
  
  
• A Note On Browser-Specific JavaScript
  At the Web Developer's Journal we've always had an in-your-face attitude to cutting edge code. If it looks good, we want to tell you about it, even if doesn't look good on everybody's screen. But browser-specific JavaScript does have its limitations.
  
  
• Layers of Simplicity
  I did not like layers. I hated how various sites used it to clutter my screen with crap. Then I came across Netscape's Expanding Colored Squares Example. I was transfixed by the expanding and contracting squares until, hours later, I realized I needed a life.
  
  
• Dynamic HTML
  So Near and Yet So Far -Netscape or Microsoft? I'll take the one in the middle, please. A silly arms-race mentality keeps exciting new tools tantalizingly out of our reach.
  
  
• Signed Scripts
  Some people don't want any Tom, Dick, or Mary to have the ability to poke around their computer, so Netscape only allows signed scripts to have special access to your computer. How do you sign scripts?
  
  
• Javascript Image Object
  Here's How To Build Crazy Roll-over Buttons. If you took a closer at some of the more popular interactive sites, you'll find that they use the Image object.
  
  

 Resources

• Doc JavaScript
  A great place to find "how to" information. Includes biweekly columns and a new JavaScript tip every day of the week.
  
  
• The JavaScript Source
  Excellent JavaScript resource with tons of "cut and paste" JavaScript examples for your pages. All for free!
  
  
• Script Search
  Huge library of downloadable scripts in JavaScript and any other language you can think of.

 Archive

• JavaScript Weirdness
  Here's a list of the percentage of JavaScript features that work in each of the popular v3 browsers.