JavaScript is a programming language that runs in your Web browser. You can use it to change colors and fonts, move images around, check data in forms, do computations, and lots of other things.
JS programs are downloaded with a Web page, either embedded in them or linked to them. They run when the Web page loads, and/or later, in response to events, like mouse clicks.
Aptana offers good support for JS programming. It does automatic indenting, shows matching braces, and so on.
If you have programmed before, you will find JavaScript easy to learn and use.
If you have not programmed before, you will find this challenging. Not because of JS - it's one of the easiest languages to learn. But programming requires you to think precisely, more precisely than you are used to. Learning how to structure your thoughts takes practice.
Do not expect to be able to just read and understand. You need to do exercises. You need to modify existing code, set yourself your own problems. You need to search the Web for more tutorials on things you don't understand. The Web has many thousands of pages about JS. You'll find stuff for you.
Here's what we'll do. The first lesson introduces JavaScript. It will show you how to include JavaScript in your pages, how to create variables, and how to do some simple input and output.
The next lesson introduces the way cool jQuery library. jQuery makes programming in JS much easier. It makes it easy to change how your page looks, depending on what the user does.
Following that, we'll see how to make more page changes with jQuery. We'll make things jump and dance.
Then we'll write some more programs, showing how you can use variables to keep track of what the user is doing.
The next lessons looks as using arrays and loops to let pages store large amount of data.
Next, we'll see you can use arrays and loops to help users accumulate and manage lots of data.