For many web developers, whenever JavaScript is mentioned it provokes a rye smile; JavaScript is one of those programming languages that is rather avoided than embraced. This is not the fault of the language itself, but rather the browsers. A few years ago, the landscape of client-side scripting was a bleak scene. Browser inconsistencies, particularly with the dominant Internet Explorer, implementation bugs and numerous target platforms made developing client-side JavaScript a tricky undertaking.

To the consternation of these same developers, the landscape changed and Web 2.0 hit the mainstream. Almost overnight, every website on the internet wanted to use or was using AJAX. Marketers joined the bandwaggon and every feature requested had to involve something dynamic and revolutionary. Thus JavaScript development quickly hit the forefront of peoples minds and became as important as any server-side technology available at the time.

Over the next few blog posts, I will be using the popular frameworks jQuery, Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI), ExtJS and Adobe’s Spry with ColdFusion to demonstrate various techniques, such as autocomplete and form validation.