Scripting and Programming

The web is primarily focused on delivering content of various types using standardized transport mechanisms and data types. As a generalization of this architecture, there are also a number of technologies for defining active components, such as scripts and programs. The most widespread technology in this area is Dynamic HTML (DHTML), which uses a scripting language to add active functionality to otherwise passive HTML pages. In most cases, these actions are used to trigger some actions (ie, script portions) upon certain user actions such as mouse movements and button clicks. Scripting languages are discussed in section 8.1.