Using Buttons

We've seen buttons since as far back as Chapter 1. Here's an example that displays an alert box using an <INPUT> type button's ONCLICK event attribute that we saw in that chapter:

 <HTML>      <HEAD>          <TITLE>              Executing Scripts in Response to User Action          </TITLE>          <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">              <!--  function alerter()   {   window.alert("You clicked the button!")   }  // -->          </SCRIPT>      </HEAD>      <BODY>          <H1>Executing Scripts in Response to User Action</H1>          <FORM>  <INPUT TYPE="BUTTON" ONCLICK="alerter()" VALUE="Click Me!">  </FORM>      </BODY>  </HTML>

Here's the same script using a <BUTTON> type element instead (if you're using Netscape Navigator, you'll need version 6+ to use the <BUTTON> element):

(Listing 12-09.html on the web site)

 <HTML>      <HEAD>          <TITLE>              Executing Scripts in Response to User Action          </TITLE>          <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">              <!--             function alerter()              {                  window.alert("You clicked the button!")              }              // -->          </SCRIPT>      </HEAD>      <BODY>          <H1>Executing Scripts in Response to User Action</H1>          <FORM>  <BUTTON ONCLICK="alerter()">Click Me!</BUTTON>  </FORM>      </BODY>  </HTML>

That's the way most buttons are used in JavaScript, but you can also click a button directly from your code, as we'll see next .