Events

JavaScript has been really challenging lately and events added onto that struggle. Thinking about events, I can say we all have ran into events on websites before. I think that events, if planned out in advance, can be easily accomplished in regards to simple tasks.

However, I found it rather frustrating trying to incorporate events into my website that I've been, on a step-by-step process, building together. I now see that CSS can have a huge effect on JavaScript because CSS alters the appearance of your content, whereas JavaScript relies on the shape of your content to act a certain way.

My problem was that my links based on my entire website's style versus the style of the accordion event were interfering with each other. I think I know why accordion is used mainly for navigation, because links specified for navigation could be set with the accordion style. Therefore, that would leave all the links in the content alone.

What I ended up doing was setting a style in the head of the HTML file for the pages that have links. I couldn't exactly get the accordion links to act separate from the content, so I had to pull my site in reverse and start building parts of it over. It was not a simple tasks. :|

Overall, if I had planned on using events from the beginning, I think I wouldn't have had much trouble. Events are useful no doubt, but I sometimes think that using a lot of advance markup can clash with other markup and make a mess of your site. What may have started out as a chore could have ended up as a fierce struggle between man and beast!

DOM

As we should all know by now, DOM stands for Document Object Model. The definition given by W3C states that "the DOM is a platform- and language-neutral interface that will allow programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure and style of documents."

The overall concept of the DOM is to create a standard for all the HTML, styles, and script that have to be animated into a web page. The vendors will then have a set way to manage and create for the Web and should make for a sort of compatibility across the Web as well.

As for my personal opinion on the DOM, I like it. I mean, it works for me and it makes sense considering it flows in that tree chart, or whatever it's called. I'm not sure what else they did or could do to manage the way all the elements of a HTML file would appear on the Web. So, either way, it works for me and that's fine.

JavaScript

My first impression of JavaScript was, and I quote, "What the..." as my mouth hung open for a minute or so.

JavaScript is still confusing to me. I'll think I've got it down, but something else will pop-up and make me scratch my head. I know I'm going to have to learn this stuff if I want to work with Web and it is the first real time I'm looking at this stuff. I'm just hoping that I'll catch on to the JavaScript know-how.

JavaScript and Java can be easily confused. If you're unaware to the concept of either, I can see why. You might think someone is just shortening JavaScript if they say "Java", but it can mean a whole world of difference if you've got the knowledge. Java is a much larger and more complicated language that creates "standalone" applications. JavaScript only works in an HTML document and is read and enacted by a web browser. A scripting language is a programming language interpreted by another program and is usually typed on a keyboard.

JavaScript was originally named "Mocha" and developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape. It was later changed to LiveScript and then finally to JavaScript. The reason for the name "JavaScript" could have been because of the added Java support for Netscape's web browser, Navigator. Now that more browsers have support for JavaScript, it is becoming more popular and accepted.