Wednesday, 10 April 2013

JavaScript


JavaScript (JS) is an interpreted computer programming language. It was originally implemented as part of web browsers so that client-side scripts could interact with the user, control the browser, communicate asynchronously, and alter the document content that was displayed.
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed, and has first-class functions. Its syntax was influenced by the language C. JavaScript copies many names and naming conventions from Java, but the two languages are otherwise unrelated and have very different semantics. The key design principles within JavaScript are taken from the Self and Scheme programming languages. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
JavaScript's use in applications outside of web pages—for example, in PDF documents, site-specific browsers, and desktop widgets—is also significant. Newer and faster JavaScript VMs and frameworks built upon them (notably Node.js) have also increased the popularity of JavaScript for server-side web applications.
JavaScript was formalized in the ECMAScript language standard and is primarily used as part of a web browser (client-side JavaScript). This enables programmatic access to computational objects within a host environment.

Birth at Netscape
JavaScript was originally developed in Netscape, by Brendan Eich. Battling with Microsoft over the Internet, Netscape considered their client-server solution as a distributed OS, running a portable version of Sun Microsystems' Java. Because Java was a competitor of C++ and aimed at professional programmers, Netscape also wanted a lightweight interpreted language that would complement Java by appealing to nonprofessional programmers, like Microsoft's Visual Basic.[9] (see JavaScript and Java)
Developed under the name Mocha, 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[10] when it was deployed in the Netscape browser version 2.0B3.
The change of name from LiveScript to JavaScript roughly coincided with Netscape adding support for Java technology in its Netscape Navigator web browser. The final choice of name caused confusion, giving the impression that the language was a spin-off of the Java programming language, and the choice 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

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