Extending HTML

Started by beingchinmay, 09-20-2016, 01:03:28

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beingchinmayTopic starter

HTML is the heart of all web programming, but it is a somewhat limited document-formatting language. It is based on tags, which instruct the
browser how to display a chunk of text or an image. As such, the HTML is limited to a static, one-way interaction with the user. The web page can be as sophisticated and attractive to the surfer's eyes as it can possibly be, but the user cannot interact with the page. Put another way, HTML simply lays there, much like a newspaper or book. The author has produced content and that content will be the same no matter how many times you read it, and it will be the same for all readers.

Interactive or dynamic web sites bring more enriched content and personalization to the web. Interaction cannot be static—it requires constructs
such as if statements and for loops, which are not part of the HTML syntax.

These missing constructs needed to make interactive web pages are found in JavaScript. This object-oriented language provides web page authors with the power to reach a very high level of interaction between the user and the document. The power of the language is best shown by its long tenure in the arena of web development tools. JavaScript has been a standard in web developers' toolboxes for over ten years, and most web development jobs today still require a strong working knowledge of JavaScript. Some technologies come and go before we even realize what
they were (Jazz drives and Virtual Reality Modeling Language come to mind), but JavaScript has earned a cornerstone place in web development. It
is truly difficult to imaging a competent web developer who is not well versed in JavaScript.