The list of different Javascript Versions

JavaScript is primarily a scripting language for use within HTML pages, while Java is a real programming language that does quite different things from JavaScript. In addition Java is much harder to learn. It was developed by Sun for use in pretty much anything that needs some computing power.

JavaScript was developed by Brendan Eich, then working at Netscape, as a client side scripting language (even though there's no fundamental reason why it can't be used in a server side environment).

Originally the language was called Live Script, but when it was about to be released Java had become immensely popular (and slightly hypey). At the last possible moment Netscape changed the name of its scripting language to “JavaScript”. This was done purely for marketing reasons. Worse, Eich was ordered to "make it look like Java". This has given rise to the idea that JavaScript is a "dumbed-down" version of Java. Unfortunately there's not the slightest shred of truth in this story.

Java and JavaScript both descend from C and C++, but the languages (or rather, their ancestors) have gone in quite different directions. You can see them as distantly related cousins. Both are object oriented (though this is less important in JavaScript than in many other languages) and they share some syntax, but the differences are more important than the similarities.

Javascript Versions

There have been several formal versions of JavaScript.

• 1.0: Netscape 2
• 1.1: Netscape 3 and Explorer 3 (the latter has bad JavaScript support, regardless of its version)
• 1.2: Early Version 4 browsers
• 1.3: Later Version 4 browsers and Version 5 browsers
• 1.4: Not used in browsers, only on Netscape servers
• 1.5: Current version.
• 2.0: Currently under development by Brendan Eich and others.

Originally, these version numbers were supposed to give support information. This-and-that method would only be supported by browsers understanding JavaScript 1.something . The higher the version number, the more nifty features the browser would support.

Get more information

Tags: javascript, javascript versions, livescript, netscape, browser, html pages, sun, brendan eich, server side