Interesting about your Java thing. I'd try it but I'm not about to go screwing around with a new browser, etc.
Take a cue from Microsoft: make so easy that it's easier to use it than not to use it.
Is there a difference between Java and Javascript? I have despised java for years. I wonder if I'll ever get around to learning, too. I despised windows for years...and now, my goodness, my laptop is my briefcase and windows is very much in my tool box.
JavaScript and Java both inherited most of their syntax from C/C++, but they are very different languages. Java is statically typed. JavaScript is dynamically typed. Both are object oriented, but their object models are quite different. More here.
JavaScript was developed at Netscape as a language to be used to script web page behavior in the browser. It was originally to be called LiveScript, but the marketdroids changed its name at the last minute, hoping to capture some of the hype Sun was generating at the time (1995) with its launch of Java. Then Flash came along and stole the applet niche from Java. Most web page eye candy today is Flash and / or JavaScript. Applets are quite rare.
Java is much clunkier to program in than JavaScript. But, whereas JavaScript is interpreted, Java code is compiled to byte code and at runtime to optimized machine code, allowing much higher performance to be achieved. These days Java is mostly used to run multi-threaded web applications on servers.
If you want to mess around with JavaScript, I recommend David Flanagan's book. It's much better than the others out there.