Introduction Much of the material here is based on the chapter 8 in the book: Programming in HTML5 with Javascript and CSS3 and the Nodes.js site . Getting started with Nodes.js "Nodes.js is built on the Google Chrome Javascript runtime" "The Platform implements an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model and is lightweight and efficient." "data-intensive,real-time applications that run across distributed devices." "executes your Javascript by using Google's V8 virtual machine" Download Nodes.js and install, need to accept the licensing agreements. HelloWorld.js var http= require('http') //" http module is a core built-in, low-level module highly optimized." http.createServer(function (request, response) { response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type':'text/plain'}); response.end('Hello World from Nodes.js!\n'); console.log('Handled request'); }).listen(8080, ...