What is JavaScript?
JavaScript is an object scripting language used in HTML with the markup language HTML. JavaScript is very popular and is universally adopted by every web browser for its support to enable dynamic content to be played on a web page. JavaScript does not contain or comply with any HTML tags or rules. It is similar to the independent programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. As JavaScript gained worldwide success with its integration into web browsers, Microsoft added JavaScript technology to its own browser Internet Explorer.
History of Javascript
JavaScript was a scripting language developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape; initially, it was named Mocha, later LiveScript, and finally JavaScript. In December 1995, Sun Microsystems and Netscape announced JavaScript in a press release. In November 1996, Netscape announced a meeting of the Ecma International standards organization to advance the standardization of JavaScript. The first edition of ECMA-262 was adopted by the Ecma General Assembly in June 1997. Several editions of the language standard have been published since then.
Meanwhile, Microsoft debuted Internet Explorer in 1995, leading to a browser war with Netscape. On the JavaScript front, Microsoft reverse-engineered the Navigator interpreter to create its own, called JScript. Microsoft initially participated in the standards process and implemented some proposals in its JScript language, but eventually, it stopped collaborating on ECMA work. Thus ECMAScript 4 was mothballed.
The standards process continued for a few years, with the release of ECMAScript 2 in June 1998 and ECMAScript 3 in December 1999. Work on ECMAScript 4 began in 2000.
During the period of Internet Explorer dominance in the early 2000s, client-side scripting was stagnant. This started to change in 2004, when the successor of Netscape, Mozilla, released the Firefox browser. Firefox was well-received by many, taking significant market share from Internet Explorer.
In 2005, Mozilla joined ECMA International, Jesse James Garrett released a white paper in which he coined the term Ajax. Many new libraries were created, including jQuery, Prototype, Dojo Toolkit, and MooTools.
Google debuted its Chrome browser in 2008, with the V8 JavaScript engine that was the first to use just-in-time compilation, significantly improving execution times. Other browser vendors needed to overhaul their engines to compete.
In July 2008, these disparate parties came together for a conference in Oslo. This led to the eventual agreement in early 2009 to combine all relevant work and drive the language forward. The result was the ECMAScript 5 standard, released in December 2009.
While both JavaScript and JScript aim to be compatible with ECMAScript, they also provide additional features not described in the ECMA specifications.