Client-Side Programming (JavaScript Essentials)

Vocabulary flashcards covering core client-side JavaScript concepts, DOM manipulation, event handling, and key terminology from Chapter 5.

DOM (Document Object Model)

The browser's live, in-memory model of a page, built from HTML but separate from the file itself.

Client-side

Code that runs in the visitor's own browser, as opposed to server-side code, which runs before a response is ever sent.

Event

A specific, named occurrence a browser can detect, such as a click or a keystroke.

Event listener

A function attached to an element that runs automatically whenever a specified event occurs on it.

textContent

A property that changes an element's visible content by treating the assigned value as plain text, even if it contains angle brackets.

innerHTML

A property that changes an element's content by parsing the assigned value as actual HTML.

DOMContentLoaded

An event that fires once the browser has finished building the DOM, used to guarantee a script runs only after the elements it needs already exist.

Runtime error

A mistake that only surfaces while a script is actually running, reported in the browser's developer console rather than blocking the page from rendering at all.

Selector

A pattern, borrowed from CSS syntax, used to identify which element or elements a method like querySelector should find.

document.getElementById()

A method that finds a single element with an exact unique id, returning one element or none.

document.querySelector()

A method that finds the first element matching a CSS-style selector, working with classes, tags, or combinations.

document.createElement()

A method that builds a new DOM element in memory until appendChild places it into the live DOM.

"input" Event

An event that fires on every single keystroke inside a text field, ideal for real-time features like a live character counter.

"change" Event

An event that fires only once, after an element loses focus and its value has settled.

defer

An attribute added to a