Re: best language

* Nikola Tesla:
But as a start, perhaps try out things in JavaScript: you can find a lot of JavaScript tutorials and general information on the web.
JavaScript is for web pages, right?
Or can I make programs with it?
Both.

And they're not mutually exclusive: a stand-alone program can be implemented as a web page such that the user can't tell.

This is an interesting topic, maybe out of my grasp right now, but
interesting nonetheless.

You mean I can create a dynamic web page (with click events and
dynamic behaviour) and make a desktop application out of it?

Yes.


Are there specific tools to do that?

Many.

Simplest in Windows is as a Windows HTML application. Essentially that means naming the file "blahbla.hta" instead of "blahblah.html". It gives just a little more functionality (e.g. setting icon and window borders), but most important it removes all visible browser stuff, guarantees execution of script code and removes security checks because as a local app it's a trusted program, so can e.g. access file system.

Next up in complexity is as a desktop widget. You can choose from a number of widget technologies, e.g. Yahoo Widgets (formerly Konqueror), Google Widgets, or e.g. Windows Vista's Desktop Gadgets. As I recall on the Mac the Mac corresponding tech also called gadgets not widgets. They're just small web pages really but look like anything.

Then at about the same level of complexity you have Mozilla's XUL technology. However, at least as of a year ago, XUL applets had to run from a Firefox or other Mozilla browser instance. They were then working on a thing which would let you make free-standing XUL applications, but I don't know how far they've come with that support.

The nice thing with widgets and XUL applets is that they can run not only as local free-standing programs, but also embedded in web pages on the net, then presented in your favorite web browser (uh, for XUL that means a Mozilla browser...). However, I'd recommend starting with Windows HTML applications, if you're using Windows. Because it's much simpler and allows you to use good old-fashioned HTML instead of strict and new-fangled XML (the only problem/restriction is that as Windows HTML-application you only get rectangular windows, not free-form).

Well, actually, in order to learn programming, if you're using Windows I'd recommend starting with even simpler technology, namely running JavaScript in Windows Script Host, WSH. File name "blahblah.js", pure JavaScript with no HTML. With this you'd start by presenting message boxes, then progress quickly to command line textual i/o -- and you need to learn to use the command interpreter anyway, in order to use programming tools for more advanced languages.

Simplest JavaScript program in WSH:

WScript.Echo( "Hello, world!" );

which presents a message box on the screen.

Cheers, & hth.,

- Alf

--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is it such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
.

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