A scripting language is a programming language that can react to Web page events (such as a user moving the mouse over a certain object, or clicking a certain button) or responding to a form submission, and produces results on the Web page (or creates a new one).

The feature that makes scripting languages different from other programming languages on the Internet (like Java) is that the program code actually exists entirely inside an HTML (or HTML-style) document, rather than in a separate encoded program file.

Scripting language “programs” can appear anywhere in the HTML document. Programmers designate the beginning of a script section with the <SCRIPT> tag and close it with a </SCRIPT> tag.

There are two major scripting languages in use today: Visual Basic Script and JavaScript.

Visual Basic Script (usually abbreviated as VBScript) is a scripting language based on the programming language Visual Basic (which in turn is based on BASIC), and was developed by the Microsoft corporation.

VBScript is primarily used in the processing of forms, and is the primary design language used for Active Server Pages (ASP).

JavaScript is a scripting language designed by Netscape Communications in 1995. It is NOT the same as the programming language Java designed by Sun Microsystems, but was designed to perform some of the same functions.

JavaScript’s primary function is to make changes to the actual Web page. JavaScript programs can run on any Web server; ASP does not have to be enabled.

Up next, we're going to look at a couple of specific JavaScript examples that will demonstrate a couple ways you can use JavaScript.