i'm learning javascript and what other levels of it exist out there?

Question

in the beginning i was learning jquery and felt limited because of the lack of knowledge of javascript, so i decided to learn as much as possible. i looked through these subjects and understood them:

variables
loops
functions
all the basic stuff that exist in all scripting/programming languages

but i didnt get too much info on objects and creating them from scratch.

i was looking around and saw people creating new instantiated objects from the ActiveXObject("Scripting.FilesystemObject") and they used it to create files on the computer system.

where can i find more of these prebuilt objects as well as all other types of scripting methods or what javascript has to provide. because when i look at jquery (and it being a structure off of javascript) there must be more to it then what meets the eye.

i have a javascript book which ive been looking at and the most it gets into are a few animation stuff which occur from mouseover and off, pretty basic.

thanks

oh and is vbscript still in use today?

Answer 1

If you're going to be doing JavaScript, I recommend getting a basic understanding of how it works (loops, conditionals such as if/else, variables, objects, arrays), and then moving on to a firm understanding of the Document Object Model (DOM). This is what you'll be interacting with the most in modern web applications.

Please, do not begin looking at libraries such as jQuery until you have a firm and solid understanding of the core concepts of JavaScript. I did this, and it threw me off for a little while and I had to rethink and relearn a lot.

Once that is covered, I would look into a library that is more developer-friendly, such as jQuery. jQuery allows you to use beautifully powerful syntax to select, modify, and create DOM Elements on the fly, and most modern web applications use a library similar to this. jQuery also has a fantastic "plugin" system, and there are plugins available to do pretty much any task you could imagine.

You can read up on jQuery on the site linked above (the homepage), or on Wikipedia. There are many other JavaScript libraries and frameworks available, but I think jQuery is the easiest to get started with thanks to a large and helpful userbase, as well as a decent set of documentation.

I hope my answer was helpful.

Edit: Please try to stay away from ActiveX Controls as well, as they're kind of Windows-centric (as I understand). The browser is for web applications, where the frontend (JavaScript) is meant to interact with the user, and the backend (PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python, .NET, etc) is meant to interact with the filesystem. I personally try not to mix the two.

Answer 2

My first step would be to ditch IE as development platform and move/upgrade myself by using Fire Fox + firebug.
After that I would learn about closures and DOM manipulation and do some projects.
Then I would start reading what Douglas has to say.

And then, and only then, start with a framework/library.