* JavaScript is prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It uses syntax influenced by the language C. JavaScript copies many names and naming conventions from Java, but the two languages are otherwise unrelated and have very different semantics. The key design principles within JavaScript are taken from the Self and Scheme programming languages.
* <syntaxhighlight lang="html4strict"> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN <"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html> <head><title>simple page</title></head> <body> <h1 id="header">This is JavaScript</h1> <script type="application/javascript"> document.body.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Hello World!')); var h1 = document.getElementById("header"); // holds a reference to the <h1> tag h1 = document.getElementsByTagName("h1")[0]; // accessing the same <h1> element </script> <noscript>Your browser either does not support JavaScript, or has JavaScript turned off.</noscript> </body> </html> </syntaxhighlight> <syntaxhighlight lang="html4strict"> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN <"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html> <head><title>simple page</title></head> <body> <h1 id="header">This is JavaScript</h1> <script type="application/javascript"> document.body.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Hello World!')); var h1 = document.getElementById("header"); // holds a reference to the <h1> tag h1 = document.getElementsByTagName("h1")[0]; // accessing the same <h1> element