Well, I've been sniffing around the stuff, absolutely sure I could work it for *years*. But last week I actually made javascript do something useful. The main breakthrough was working out I could report what the damn stuff was doing (or not doing) using 'alert' commands. Makes for irritating popups - but does at least trigger debug info without bothering the displayed page. Also (funnily enough) the error log in firefox is occasionally helpful (Run javascript. Nothing happens. Is it doing anything I wonder. Turn on error log. Error log spews errors. Ah! I say sagely, I have broken my script. I wonder where?). The error long is not very helpful at reporting exactly what is wrong - but that seems to be par for the course in these things.
Meanwhile, I can now use cookies to store information, and make pages behave differently depending on that information. A mighty border has been crossed.
I'm pretty sure "typography poem" is a phrase which would not trigger a spam filter.