SCRIPT - Client-side Script

The SCRIPT element includes a client-side script in the document. Client-side scripts allow greater interactivity in a document by responding to user events. For example, a script could be used to check the user's form input prior to submission to provide immediate notice of any errors by the user.

The required TYPE attribute of SCRIPT specifies the media type of the scripting language, e.g., text/javascript. However, many browsers only support the deprecated LANGUAGE attribute, which specifies the language name. Examples of supported LANGUAGE values include JavaScript, JavaScript1.1, and VBScript. The values are not case sensitive.

An embedded script is given as the content of the SCRIPT element. The SRC attribute allows authors to reuse code by specifying an external script. The optional CHARSET attribute gives the character encoding of the external script (typically ISO-8859-1). When the SRC attribute is used, the embedded script is ignored. An example follows:

<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript" SRC="foo.js" CHARSET="ISO-8859-1">
<!--
  // embedded script ignored
// -->
</SCRIPT>

Netscape Navigator requires that external scripts be served with a Content-Type of application/x-javascript.

The DEFER attribute indicates that the browser may wait to parse the script until the rest of the document has been rendered. Scripts that use DEFER must not generate any document content, and should not be required to respond to user events (e.g., form submission) that may occur while the document is loading. The DEFER attribute can be useful for delaying scripts that pre-load images or harass the user with scrolling messages in the status bar, though current browsers do not generally support this attribute.

The SCRIPT element may occur any number of times in the document HEAD or BODY. Typically the SCRIPT element is used in the HEAD unless it generates BODY content.

Pre-HTML 3.2 browsers, unaware of the SCRIPT element, will treat the content of SCRIPT as normal HTML. To make these browsers ignore the SCRIPT's content, scripting languages generally allow SGML comments to be used around an embedded script. For example:

<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript">
<!-- comment to end of line
  document.write("foo");
// comment to end of line -->
</SCRIPT>

Note that "-->" is contained within a JavaScript single-line comment (started with two slashes).

Technically, the first occurrence of "</" followed by any letter is considered the end tag for the SCRIPT element. While browsers are forgiving in this, authors should avoid using strings such as "</P>" in their embedded scripts. JavaScript allows authors to use a backslash to avoid ending the SCRIPT element prematurely, e.g., document.write("<\/P>").

More Information

• SCRIPT in W3C HTML 4.0 Recommendation
• SCRIPT in W3C HTML 3.2 Recommendation
• SCRIPT in WDG HTML 3.2 Reference
• SCRIPT in Learning HTML 3.2 by Examples
• JavaScript Guide
  • Embedding JavaScript in HTML
• JavaScript Reference