About this Book
JavaScript is Netscape's cross-platform, object-based scripting language. This book explains everything you need to know about using core JavaScript.
This preface contains the following sections:
New Features in this Release
For a summary of JavaScript 1.5 features, see "New Features in this Release" on page 18. Information on these features has been incorporated in this manual.
What You Should Already Know
This book assumes you have the following basic background:
Some programming experience with a language such as C or Visual Basic is useful, but not required.
JavaScript Versions
Each version of Navigator supports a different version of JavaScript. To help you write scripts that are compatible with multiple versions of Navigator, this manual lists the JavaScript version in which each feature was implemented.
The following table lists the JavaScript version supported by different Navigator versions. Versions of Navigator prior to 2.0 do not support JavaScript.
Table 1 JavaScript and Navigator versions
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JavaScript version
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Navigator version
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JavaScript 1.0
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Navigator 2.0
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|
JavaScript 1.1
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Navigator 3.0
|
|
JavaScript 1.2
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Navigator 4.0-4.05
|
|
JavaScript 1.3
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Navigator 4.06-4.7x
|
|
JavaScript 1.4
|
|
|
JavaScript 1.5
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Navigator 6.0
Mozilla (open source browser)
|
Each version of the Netscape Enterprise Server also supports a different version of JavaScript. To help you write scripts that are compatible with multiple versions of the Enterprise Server, this manual uses an abbreviation to indicate the server version in which each feature was implemented.
Table 2 Abbreviations of Netscape Enterprise Server versions
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Abbreviation
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Enterpriser Server version
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|
NES 2.0
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Netscape Enterprise Server 2.0
|
|
NES 3.0
|
Netscape Enterprise Server 3.0
|
Where to Find JavaScript Information
The core JavaScript documentation includes the following books:
If you are new to JavaScript, start with the Core JavaScript Guide. Once you have a firm grasp of the fundamentals, you can use the Core JavaScript Reference to get more details on individual objects and statements.
DevEdge, Netscape's online developer resource, contains information that can be useful when you're working with JavaScript. The following URLs are of particular interest:
http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/javascript.html
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The JavaScript page of the DevEdge library contains documents of interest about JavaScript. This page changes frequently. You should visit it periodically to get the newest information.
http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/
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The DevEdge library contains documentation on many Netscape products and technologies.
http://developer.netscape.com
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The DevEdge home page gives you access to all DevEdge resources.
http://mozilla.org/js/
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Mozilla.org coordinates the development effort of Mozilla, the open-source browser upon which Netscape 6 is based. You can find information about JavaScript at Mozilla's JavaScript project page as well as ongoing discussion about JavaScript issues in the public newsgroup, netscape.public.mozilla.jseng.
Document Conventions
JavaScript applications run on many operating systems; the information in this book applies to all versions. File and directory paths are given in Windows format (with backslashes separating directory names). For Unix versions, the directory paths are the same, except that you use slashes instead of backslashes to separate directories.
This book uses uniform resource locators (URLs) of the following form:
http://server.domain/path/file.html
In these URLs, server represents the name of the server on which you run your application, such as research1 or www; domain represents your Internet domain name, such as netscape.com or uiuc.edu; path represents the directory structure on the server; and file.html represents an individual file name. In general, items in italics in URLs are placeholders and items in normal monospace font are literals. If your server has Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) enabled, you would use https instead of http in the URL.
This book uses the following font conventions:
The monospace font is used for sample code and code listings, API and language elements (such as method names and property names), file names, path names, directory names, HTML tags, and any text that must be typed on the screen. (Monospace italic font is used for placeholders embedded in code.)
Italic type is used for book titles, emphasis, variables and placeholders, and words used in the literal sense.
Boldface type is used for glossary terms.