JavaScript and Ajax for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide, Seventh Edition

ECMAScript

In 1996, Web developers began to complain that Netscape was going in one direction with JavaScript, and Microsoft in a somewhat-compatible but different direction with JScript. Nobody likes to have to code pages to handle different dialects of JavaScript, or have their code work in one browser but not another. Developers wanted a standard. So Netscape went to an international standards body called ECMA and submitted the JavaScript language specification to it, and Microsoft threw in its own comments and suggestions. ECMA did whatever it is that standards bodies do and in June of 1997 produced a standard called ECMA-262 (also known as ECMAScript, a term that just dances off the tongue). This standard closely resembled JavaScript 1.1, ...