JavaScript

Not to be confused with Java (programming language) or JavaScript.

JavaScript is a prototype-based, object-oriented scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions.

JavaScript is an implementation of the ECMAScript language standard and is primarily used in the form of client-side JavaScript, implemented as part of a web browser in order to provide enhanced user interfaces and dynamic websites.

JavaScript uses syntax influenced by that of C. JavaScript copies many names and naming conventions from Java, but the two languages are otherwise unrelated and have very different semantics.

JavaScript was originally developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape under the name Mocha, which was later renamed to LiveScript, and finally to JavaScript.

LiveScript was the official name for the language when it first shipped in beta releases of Netscape Navigator 2.0 in September 1995, but it was renamed JavaScript in a joint announcement with Sun Microsystems on December 4, 1995, when it was deployed in the Netscape browser version 2.0B3.

JavaScript very quickly gained widespread success as a client-side scripting language for web pages.

As a consequence, Microsoft developed a partially compatible dialect of the language, naming it JScript to avoid trademark issues. JScript added new date methods to fix the Y2K-problematic methods in JavaScript, which were based on Java’s java.util.Date class. JScript was included in Internet Explorer 3.0, released in August 1996.

In November 1996, Netscape announced that it had submitted JavaScript to Ecma International for consideration as an industry standard, and subsequent work resulted in the standardized version named ECMAScript.