Catchy web layouts & features question...

[jcsandals]

Hello,
I have been learning PHP for a little while now and have made a couple fairly interactive web pages (for keeping in touch with family). I have and have read a couple books on PHP and am very pleased with the functionality that it has given me.

I also have read a book on CSS, though it was more of a speed read. With these two technologies I can pretty much do everything I need to do, but I am looking to take things a little bit further.

I want to be able to have more "fun" features like having drop down menus and dynamic content. I bought a book on javascript, but it seems to be very inefficient for what I am trying to do. Maybe the book just sucks, but it is just teaching me how to do similar things that I already know how to do with PHP (i.e. form validation, string manipulation, and yadda yadda).

So far the only two things that I have seen javascript being useful for (in my case that is) are popup windows and drop down menus, though I think its easier to make simple drop down menus with just CSS.

Does javascript really provide me with anything other than the headache of learning another scripting language? Should I just say screw it and look into flash? Sorry for such a long post, btw. Javascript just seems so primitive... Thanks for any help =)

[Wickham]

I think Javascript is becoming less and less useful.

PHP can do a lot that Javascript does without the problem of having javascript disabled (perhaps by your IT department so you can't enable it).

CSS can do drop down menus and hover popups quite well enough.

However, JQuery and Ajax seems to be the latest whizz languages and they have taken Javascript to a new level.