What is Javascript? |
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Javascript is a scripting language that allows a web page to tell the browser what to do. It is a client-side language, meaning that it is interpreted and processed on the computer viewing the web site – not on the server. This means that it is usually very limited in what it can do, but can be convenient since it does not rely on any special requirements on the server-side, and can also run off a CD with no web server present. Please note that Javascript is not the same as Java, and they bear only marginal similarities in syntax. Java is a powerful, general-purpose programming language and can run outside of a web browser. Zoom provides a Javascript version of the search script to cater for users who wish to run their search engines on a CD-ROM, or who have a very restricted hosting environment with no server-side scripting capability. However, due to the technical constraints of Javascript on most browsers, we are unable to provide the full number of features (such as context descriptions) that are available with the other platform options. It is also unsuitable for large volumes of data, and sites of over 1000 pages or with a large number of unique words, will not run on some browsers. There is an alternative to running Zoom on CD/DVDs, and that is to include a specialised mini-web server on your CD, so that you can run the CGI or PHP version off the CD. More information is available in "Using the CGI or PHP version on a CD/DVD distribution". |