Making a new window with JavaScript
a bonus example for those who have finished the HTML intro

This page assumes some basic programming knowledge...if you don't know what a "variable" is, you may find this business opaque. So it goes....

This page has a simple example that shows how to spawn a new window from a link. If you click this link, you should see a window that is 400x400 containing the front page of the new Russian Language Program site.

This whole business is created using JavaScript, a programming language used to add interactivity and dynamic effects to basic HTML. NOTE: JavaScript has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Java...the name was created by marketing folk at Netscape to cash in on the hype surrounding the introduction of the object-oriented Java programming language a few years back.

The main Javascript function (hidden in the document's head section) looks like this:

function makewindow(someurl)
{
	newwindow=window.open(someurl,"michaelwindow","scrollbars,width=400,height=400");
}
The variable someurl is the URL you want to open; "michaelwindow" is simply a name for the window so you can refer to it in another JavaScript function if necessary, and the final string parameter ("scrollbars,width=400,height=400") is a list of characteristics that the window will have.

You invoke the window with an ordinary anchor tag, but instead of supplying a URL for the HREF, you supply something like the following:

HREF="javascript:makewindow('http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/russian/');"

You may want to examine the source code for this page to see how it is all put together.