What You Need to Use This Book

Because JavaScript is a text-based technology, all you really need to create documents containing JavaScript is NotePad (or your equivalent text editor).

Also, in order to try out the code in this book, you will need a web browser that supports JavaScript 1.2 or above, namely version 4 or above of Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. (See the table in Chapter 1 that lists the versions of JavaScript that are supported in the different versions of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.) Later in the book we'll also be looking at code specific to the latest browsers, and for this you'll need Internet Explorer 6 and Netscape Navigator 7. Some of the code in later chapters, where we examine Dynamic HTML and scripting of the DOM, is specific to particular browsers, but the majority of the code presented is cross-browser-compatible. Where there are exceptions, they will be clearly noted.

In Chapter 16, we introduce scripting on the server-side with JavaScript and Active Server Pages (ASP). You will need a web server to run the code examples in this and the subsequent chapter. We have used Microsoft's free Internet Information Server, for which there is an installation guide included in Chapter 16, but any other server that supports ASP is also OK.

In Chapter 17, we use JavaScript to access a database. For demonstration purposes, the database we use is Microsoft Access 2000, so to run the code examples you will need this software on your machine. The database itself is available for download along with the rest of the code for this book.