Status: draft proposal, not for deployment
The CERN web framework uses jQuery and provides a few extensions in the form of widgets. The good news is that you don't need to program in javascript to use the widgets - simply add classes to your HTML elements in the correct way and you'll have ready-made interactivity and graphical bling.
To activate the javascript framework, add this to your HTML head:
<script type="text/Javascript" src="https://cern.ch/framework/js/jquery.1.2.6.js"></script>
<script type="text/Javascript" src="https://cern.ch/framework/js/widgets/cern_ww.js"></script>
Assume that your standard user doesn't have javascript enabled, make the page useable for them, then add your javascript at the end.