JavaScript Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - 2.33, by Herong Yang
What Is JavaScript
This section provides a quick description of what is JavaScript.
What is JavaScript? JavaScript is a scripting language mainly used for writing dynamic Web pages. When a script written in JavaScript is embedded in a Web page, it will be executed by the Web browser on the client machine.
The history of JavaScript is nicely summarized on wikipedia.org as:
JavaScript was originally developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape under the name Mocha, later LiveScript, and finally renamed to JavaScript. The change of name from LiveScript to JavaScript roughly coincided with Netscape adding support for Java technology in its Netscape Navigator web browser. JavaScript was first introduced and deployed in the Netscape browser version 2.0B3 in December of 1995. The naming has caused confusion, giving the impression that the language is a spinoff of Java and has been characterized by many as a marketing ploy by Netscape to give JavaScript the cachet of what was then the hot new web-programming language.
To avoid trademark issues, Microsoft named its implementation of the language JScript. JScript was first supported in Internet Explorer version 3.0, released in August 1996 and included Y2K compliant date functions, unlike those based on java.util.Date in JavaScript at the time.
Netscape submitted JavaScript to ECMA International for standardization resulting in the standardized version named ECMAScript.
JavaScript versions and release dates:
JavaScript 1.8.5 July 2010 - ECMA-262 5th edition JavaScript 1.8 June 2008 JavaScript 1.7 October 2006 JavaScript 1.6 November 2005 JavaScript 1.5 November 2000 - ECMA-262 3rd edition JavaScript 1.4 JavaScript 1.3 October 1998 - ECMA-262 1st + 2nd JavaScript 1.2 June 1997 JavaScript 1.1 August 1996 JavaScript 1.0 March 1996
As a programming language, JavaScript has the following unique features:
As of 2020, the latest version of the JavaScript is 1.8.5.
Table of Contents
First JavaScript - "Hello World!"
Walking through the First JavaScript
ECMAScript Language Specification and JavaScript Dialects
Data Types, Variables and Expressions
Creating, Accessing, and Manipulating Arrays
Defining and Calling Functions
Web Browser Supporting JavaScript
Server-Side and Client-Side Web Scripting
Defining Your Own Object Types
Inheritance of Properties and Methods through the Prototype Object Chain
'jrunscript' - JavaScript Shell Command from JDK
Using Functions as "Function" Objects
Introduction to Built-in Object Types
W3C's Document Object Model (DOM) Specifications