HTML, XHTML & CSS

12
Part IV: Scripting and (X)HTML
Finding Out What JavaScript
Can Do for Your Pages
Adding scripts to your Web site is much like those reality-TV makeover
shows that transform a house or a person’s appearance into something
completely new and wonderful. The same is true with JavaScript. You can
transform a plain, dull Web page into an interactive and dynamic Web extravaganza
to bring joy to your visitors for years to come. (Okay, maybe we’re
exaggerating just a tad, but you get the point.)
For example, if you visit Dummies.com (www.dummies.com) and click the
blue Search button next to the Start Exploring box without entering a term to
search on, the browser displays a nice warning box that reminds you to enter
a search term before you actually search, as shown in Figure 13-1.
Figure 13-1: The search term is empty — that is, missing.
A short script verifies whether you entered a search term before the engine
runs the query:
✓ If you enter a search term, you don’t see the warning.
✓ If you don’t enter a search term, the script built into the page prompts
the dialog box to appear.