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Now you're going to take your first step into programming by learning three different ways to output messages with JavaScript: a dialog box, writing directly to the console and writing to the current web page.
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Now, you're going to take your first
step into programming by creating
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a simple JavaScript program.
0:03
A program is a set of instructions
that perform specific tasks
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when executed by the computer.
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In other words,
you're telling the computer what to do.
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To get started and code along with me,
open your workspace and
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preview the index.html file in the browser
by clicking the Preview Workspace icon.
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As you learned earlier, one of the
benefits of programming with JavaScript,
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and what makes JavaScript unique
to other programming languages,
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is that it runs in the browser.
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There's no need to set up any
kind of development environment,
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which means you can start coding
with JavaScript right away.
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As you learned earlier, there's
a development tool built right into
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the browser called the JavaScript console,
which you can use to run JavaScript code.
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Most browsers have a JavaScript console,
but to follow along with me,
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I suggest that you use Chrome,
since that's what I'll use in this course.
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You can open the console using the
keyboard shortcut Cmd+Option+J on a Mac,
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or Ctrl+Shift+J on Windows.
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Or another quick way is to right or
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Ctrl+click anywhere in your browser
window, and to choose Inspect.
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This will open up Chrome DevTools,
which is a useful set of web
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developer tools to help you
build websites and applications.
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You may have already used
the Elements tab, for
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example, to inspect your HTML and CSS.
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Click Console to get to
the JavaScript console.
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The Console is often used to inspect
the inner workings of your websites and
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applications.
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You can see messages
logged from JavaScript or
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any errors that might be occurring.
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And as you experienced earlier,
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you can run JavaScript in the console to
interact with the page you're inspecting.
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In the console, you can also run
JavaScript that's not related to the page.
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Sometimes, you just want to test some code
or try out a certain JavaScript feature.
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The Console is a perfect place for
these kinds of experiments.
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For example, in the Console,
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you can use JavaScript to perform
basic math operations, like 10 + 5.
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Press Enter and
the Console outputs the result of
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the math operation below your code,
in this case 15.
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If you type something in between
quotation marks like, Hello, world!,
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it will echo it back to you.
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By default, the Console clears
whenever you refresh the page.
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You can also click the Clear console icon,
or right or
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Ctrl+click anywhere in the console and
select Clear console.
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Now, let's use a command called alert,
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which I showed you at
the beginning of the course.
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Type the word alert in a lowercase
into the Console, followed by ();.
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Let's see what it does.
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Press Enter, or Return,
to run this command in the console,
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and a dialog box pops up in the browser.
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It seems like something is
missing in the dialog box.
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So let's try adding a message.
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And here's a shortcut, to bring back the
previous command you ran in the console,
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press the up arrow key
on your keyboard once.
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This lets you edit the command and
run it again.
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This time add a set of quotes
inside the parentheses, and
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in between the quotes, type, Hello world!.
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Press Enter, again, and
now there's a message.
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Alert is a command that's
built into the browser.
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It opens a dialog box and
displays a message.
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What we've typed here is
called a JavaScript statement.
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A statement is like a sentence,
and just as sentences end
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in a period,
JavaScript statements end in a ;.
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You write programs by
typing multiple statements,
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just like you write a paragraph
by writing multiple sentences.
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Let's add another statement,
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console.log is another widely used command
that outputs a message to the console.
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Like alert, you can take the message
between the parentheses,
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within a set of quotes,
write Hello world!.
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console.log is going to log or print
the message Hello world to the Console.
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Pressing Enter displays the message.
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This might not seem
immediately interesting, but
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as we get farther along in the course and
you do more programming,
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you'll start to see just how
handy console.log can be.
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Here's another command, document.write().
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The word document represents
the current web page, and
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write is a command that writes
a message to the current web page.
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You'll learn more about why there's
a dot between document and write and
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between console and log, for
example, later in this course.
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Now, let's provide a message to
document.write between quotation marks.
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This time I'll type,
Welcome to my web page.
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Press Enter, and notice how it writes
the message directly into the web page.
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Everything on the page is
replaced by the message.
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This is not permanent, though.
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Refreshing the page
brings everything back.
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document.write is not as widely used
as some of the other techniques
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you'll learn to insert
content into a web page.
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But you still might see it used in
real-world projects, and it's a quick and
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simple way to let you produce some
output while learning JavaScript,
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just like alert and even console.log.
5:14
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