SlashXB is an application environment that allows users to develop programs using HTML and JavaScript. A good tutorial on how to use SlashXB can be found here. Sense the applications are HTML and JS they can either be run locally (SlashXB applications are run within a GUI frame provided by Mozilla, without the need to actually start up a Mozilla and open the SlashXB file) or can be served over the web. Sounds like a good way to teach newbies how to program without turning them into worthless VB programmers.
That and there are a whole lot of people out there that can JavaScript but don’t know how to program in a conventional language.