JavaScript is a very popular programming language or in simpler terms, a means to instruct the computer to do some things. It was introduced in 1995 as a way to add programs and interactivity to web pages in the Netscape Navigator browser. It has been since adopted to all major web browsers and you can use it to do really cool stuff on web pages!

JavaScript is a scripting language. A scripting language is basically a programming language that allows some control of a single or many software applications. In this case the application is the browser.

Most scripting languages allow two ways/modes of execution. Either as a script (code saved in a file that can be run) or on the console (one command at a time, where you can see the result of each command right after you enter it). JavaScript runs on the browser and most modern browsers have a JavaScript console. A console is basically a prompt for you to type in a command and run it.

In this tutorial we'll show you how to use the JavaScript console of the Google Chrome browser. We recommend using Google Chrome to avoid any confusion later (we have included instructions in this tutorial to install it incase you use other web browsers currently).