JavaScript is used in millions of Web pages to improve the design, validate forms, detect browsers, create cookies, and much more. JavaScript is the scripting language of the Web!
JavaScript is the most popular scripting language on the internet.
JavaScript was created in 1995 by Brendan Eich, an engineer at Netscape, and first released with Netscape 2 early in 1996. It's was originally going to be called LiveScript, but was renamed in an ill-fated marketing decision to capitalise on the popularity of Sun Microsystem's Java language - despite the two having very little in common. This has been a source of confusion ever since.
Microsoft released a mostly-compatible version of the language called JScript with IE 3 several months later. Netscape submitted the language to Ecma International, a European standards organisation, which resulted in the first edition of the Ecmascript standard in 1997. The standard received a significant update as Ecmascript edition 3 in 1999, and has stayed pretty much stable ever since - although edition 4 is currently in the works.
Unlike most programming languages, the JavaScript language has no concept of input or output. It is designed to run as a scripting language in a host environment, and it is up to the host environment to provide mechanisms for communicating with the outside world. The most common host environment is the browser, but JavaScript interpreters can also be found in Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, Yahoo!'s Widget engine and more.
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