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In the community of web developers and surfers, Javascript is highly popular as client side scripting language for web browsers. In any web application, javascript can be used to implement simple features like rollover of images as well as to make asynchronous requests to server using ajax. Few years back when flash was not so popular, javascript was widely used to add beautiful effects to webpages and is still being used for the same purpose. Lets take a look at some of the features of this language.

1. Browser support
   To access flash content, you need to install flash plugin in your browser. But to use javascript, you dont have to use any plugin at all. This is because all browsers have accepted javascript as a scripting language for them and provides integrated support for it. All you need to do is to handle some of the tasks that are dependent on DOM (Document Object Model) of different browsers properly.
2. Can be used on client side as well as on server side
   As javascript has access to Document object model of browser, you can actually change the structure of web pages at runtime. Due to this, javascript can be used to add different effects to webpages. On the other hand, javascript could be used on the server side as well. For example, in Alfresco which is a popular open source enterprise content management system, javascript is used in creating webscripts. This makes adding custom tasks to alfresco quite simple.
3. Functional programming language
   In javascript, function could be assigned to variables just like any other data types. Not only that, but a function can accept another function as a parameter and can also return a function. You can have functions with no name as well. Clearly, this gives you the ability to code in functional programming style.
4. Support for objects
   Javascript is an object oriented language. However, the way javascript handles objects and inheritance is bit different from conventional object oriented programming languages like Java. Due to this, javascript supports most of the object oriented concepts while being simple to learn and use.
   
   These are some of the features that give javascript an ability to handle simple as well as complex tasks. Due to this, javascript has remained as the most popular programming language for a long time. It is also a good language for people who want to learn computer programming as it supports object oriented as well as function concepts and to use it, you just need a browser and a text editor.

Source: www.webdesign.org