Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll
Preview
Start a free Courses trial
to watch this video
JavaScript has evolved into a powerful, robust programming language. In this video, you'll more about how the JavaScript language and its standards evolved into their current state.
Resources
Related Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign upRelated Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign up
JavaScript has evolved into a powerful
robust programming language over
0:00
the years.
0:03
Earlier I briefly covered the history of
JavaScript, in this video I'll talk about
0:04
how the JavaScript language and its
standard evolved to their current state.
0:09
When JavaScript was officially
released in Netscape Navigator,
0:13
it became in instant game
changer in web user experience.
0:16
So competing browsers couldn't help but
to take notice and
0:20
come up with their own
version of JavaScript.
0:23
Microsoft in particular wanted
a scripting language for their browser,
0:25
Internet Explorer.
0:29
So they've created their own
implementation of JavaScript.
0:30
They named their version, JScript,
since the name JavaScript was trademarked.
0:33
The differences between JavaScript and
JScript, made it difficult for
0:37
designers and developers to make
a website work well in multiple browsers.
0:41
A site that worked in Netscape would not
work at all in Internet Explorer and
0:46
vice versa.
0:50
So developing a site that
worked in both in Netscape and
0:51
IE became extremely tedious,
time consuming and expensive.
0:54
Because of this, JavaScript
started getting a reputation for
0:58
being a road block to
moving the web forward.
1:01
At the time JavaScript wasn't
standardized, there were no rules and
1:03
guidelines established for
implementing JavaScript in browsers.
1:07
So in 1996 Netscape decided
to standardized JavaScript.
1:11
They submitted JavaScript to the standards
organization ECMA international for
1:15
a consideration as an industry standard.
1:20
ECMAScript became the official name used
to refer to versions of the language.
1:22
The language was standardized under a
technical committee at ECMA known as TC39.
1:27
ECMAScript would open up JavaScript to
a wider audience while keeping other
1:33
implementations like Microsoft's JScript
consistent across browsers and
1:37
giving other implementors a voice
in the evolution of the language.
1:42
The first edition of ECMAScript
was released in 1997.
1:46
ECMAScript 2 and
3 were standardized soon after,
1:50
introducing more features to the language.
1:53
But the process of evolving and growing
JavaScript become a bit challenging and
1:55
difficult after that.
2:00
When it came time to work on
ECMAScript 4 the TC39 committee could not
2:01
agree on its feature set.
2:05
By 2003, because of major differences,
concerning language complexity,
2:07
and on how JavaScript was to move forward,
2:12
work by the committee had stopped,
TC39 broke up, and the spec was abandoned.
2:15
Many of the proposed features
were completely dropped.
2:20
So for years, there were no major changes
to the language and no real push for
2:23
a new release of the ECMAScript standard.
2:28
But in late 2008 the TC39 committee
harmoniously regrouped to
2:30
work on ECMAScript 3.1,
which was later renamed to ECMAScript 5.
2:35
And ES 5 introduced a number of features
to the language which including support
2:40
for JSON, Getters and Setters and objects,
and new array methods like Filter,
2:45
forEach, and map.
2:49
ES 5 is a version of JavaScript that is
fully supported in all modern browsers
2:50
today.
2:55
Although ECMAScript 4 was abandoned, some
of its features eventually made their way
2:55
into the sixth edition of JavaScript,
ES 6.
3:00
ES 6 was in the works for several years,
it was the largest upgrade to
3:03
the language and a big milestone
in the history of JavaScript.
3:07
When ES 6 was finalized in June 2015,
3:11
it officially became known as
ECMAScript 2015 or ES 2015.
3:15
Today, the ECMA TC39 committee
is still responsible for
3:20
authoring a spec and evolving
the programming language by deciding what
3:24
features get added to the language.
3:29
The TC39 Committee is made up of delegates
from different companies including
3:31
major browser vendors and big names
like Netflix, Facebook, and PayPal.
3:36
The delegates are responsible for
creating, approving, or
3:40
denying language proposals.
3:43
Did you know that there's also different
varieties or flavors of JavaScript?
3:45
You'll get a sampling of the common
JavaScript flavors in the next video.
3:49
That way you'll know which one might
work best for you and your team.
3:52
You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.
Sign upYou need to sign up for Treehouse in order to set up Workspace
Sign up