Overview #

Javascript is the programming language of the web. So far, we have used HTML to structure the content of our web pages and CSS to stylize our content.

But what if you want to have your web page change based on input from your user? Javascript allows us to take our pages from static web pages to dynamic web applications.

First steps: Understanding the DOM #

One of the main reasons we use Javascript to build interactivity is because it allows us to manipulate the Document Object Model (or DOM) for short.

Recall our discussion from the first lesson where we discussed how HTML is structured as a tree. Similarly, the DOM stores HTML elements as objects that can then be manipulated in various ways.