What is JavaScript?

[CiberTHuG]

Okay, I'm wondering if maybe JavaScript is merely ECMAScript (ECMA-262) compliant, and not the living embodiement of ECMAScript. I'm wondering if maybe there is more in JavaScript than is covered in the ECMA standards.

For example, setTimeout and clearTimeout. These aren't part of ECMAScript, but they are in IE and Netscape's implementation of JavaScript. Is there documentation of what JavaScript is? Is there a standard?

[Cudabean]

Yes, JavaScript is ECMAScript, or was until Gates & co. started pissing in the swimming pool. With IE as the dominant browser, now there is no standard.

The answer to your other question is there's "more, less and other" in JavaScript compared to the ECMAScript standard.

Having no standard is why it's so very hard to write cross-platform JavaScript and also why people are starting to give up and make their code IE centric. Ignoring standards and even blatantly changing standards makes a lot of sense for Microsoft, but everybody else loses out in productivity and bad attitudes.

cudabean

[JoshT]

For example, setTimeout and clearTimeout. These aren't part of ECMAScript, but they are in IE and Netscape's implementation of JavaScript. Is there documentation of what JavaScript is? Is there a standard?

ECMA defines a language that is based on Netscape's original Javascript syntax, but defines it in way that is a more general purpose scripting language rather than a web browser scripting languages, and those functions are part the the web browser object that ECMAScript can manipulate when it is run in a web browser host. At least that's my take on it - ECMAScript is a syntax, and other technologies, like DOM, provide objects for it to interact with.

[CiberTHuG]

That's my take, too, Josh. And since these client controls are outside the scope of the DOM and ECMAScript, they will never be documented by the W3C or ECMA (although I don't see why these can't fold into the DOM Events standards).

If that is the case, who is documenting "JavaScript beyond ECMAScript"? I would imagine NC, since they invented it. But I haven't, yet, found anything really documenting it as part of JavaScript, just part of implimentations.

As Cuda pointed out, if no one controls this, MS will drive it with brute force, and it will become part of the EEE tactic.

[CiberTHuG]

Okay, I found this document outlining JavaScript 1.3. I can't find any documents in the same library for newer versions of JavaScript, save server-side implimentations. Was 1.3 the last client-side update?

http://developer.netscape.com/docs/m...sref/index.htm

[JoshT]

This site mentions a 1.4:
http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/js/

Nothing on what is considered official though.

[CiberTHuG]

Though it is at Mozilla and not Netscape:

http://www.mozilla.org/js/js15.html

JavaScript 1.5 is in RC1