"Sams Teach Yourself Beginning Programming..." Page 16. button doesn't work

**parisda** · 05-09-2016, 03:13 AM

Hello,
I wrote my first program, and it opens ok, but when I click on the button, nothing happens. To me, everything looks good, but obviously, other than spelling and punctuation, I don't know what to look for.

Here is what I have:

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script>

/* This is the function that gets
called when the user clicks the
button on the main page */

function displayAnswer ()
{
document . write(“Just 24 1-hour lessons!”);
}
</script>
</head>
<body>


<h1>My First Program</h1>
<p id=“demo”>How long will it take for me to learn to program?</p>

<button type=“button” onclick=“displayAnswer ()”>How many hours?<button/button>

</body>
</html>

That's the whole program.

The <button> should open a new window with the reply "just 24 1-hour lessons".

I don't know what brackets {} or parentheses () are for, and sometimes its hard to tell if there is a space in a code, or not.

Also, I tried to enable the Apple Safari Debugger, according to online directions, but I guess I don't know enough about "Terminal" to get it going.

So, my main question is, if it's not a blatant typo, such as <buton>, then what else stops the program in its tracks?

Thank you,

David Paris
Ann Arbor

**Dormilich** · 05-09-2016, 07:01 AM

So, my main question is, if it's not a blatant typo, such as <buton>, then what else stops the program in its tracks?

it’s a combination of blatant typo (using typographical quotes instead of straight quotes, in both HTML and JS) and the use of document.write(), which—according to definition—erases your document.

PS. you don’t need the Terminal to open Safari’s dev tools. just cmd+alt+i (after you enabled debugging mode in the Safari settings).

**parisda** · 05-13-2016, 01:35 AM

Originally Posted by Dormilich

it’s a combination of blatant typo (using typographical quotes instead of straight quotes, in both HTML and JS) and the use of document.write(), which—according to definition—erases your document.

PS. you don’t need the Terminal to open Safari’s dev tools. just cmd+alt+i (after you enabled debugging mode in the Safari settings).

I increased my font size to 48 so I could see what my quote marks looked like. I noticed that when I typed a quote ("), it had the appearance of what you might call a "straight" quote, but in a fraction of a second it automatically changed to what you could probably call a "typographical" quote. It did this little magic trick whether or not the box was checked in Preferences for "Smart quotes"- whatever that means.

I don't understand why this book doesn't describe the importance of quotation marks and other incidentals to get a person rolling right off the bat!

Any other suggestions?

**xelawho** · 05-13-2016, 03:54 AM

Originally Posted by parisda

I increased my font size to 48 so I could see what my quote marks looked like. I noticed that when I typed a quote ("), it had the appearance of what you might call a "straight" quote, but in a fraction of a second it automatically changed to what you could probably call a "typographical" quote. It did this little magic trick whether or not the box was checked in Preferences for "Smart quotes"- whatever that means.

I don't understand why this book doesn't describe the importance of quotation marks and other incidentals to get a person rolling right off the bat!

Any other suggestions?

sounds to me like you might be using a word processing program to write your code, which is a fabulously bad idea. I use the free notepad++ program for windows. If you're on Mac, apparently Sublime Text is a good alternative but I have never tried it.

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