Introduction
JavaScript is a programming language that represents one of the three main languages used to develop websites, alongside HTML and CSS. While HTML and CSS give a website structure and style, JavaScript allows you to add functionality and behaviors to your website. This allows visitors to interact with your website in a variety of creative ways.
The first browser
The first popular web browser with a graphical user interface, Mosaic, was released in 1993. Accessible to non-technical people, the browser played a prominent role in the rapid growth of the early World Wide Web. The original developers of Mosaic then founded Netscape, which released a more advanced browser called Netscape Navigator in 1994. This browser quickly became the most widely used.
During these formative years of the web, web pages could only be static, lacking the ability to behave dynamically once the page was loaded in the browser. In the burgeoning web development scene, there was a desire to remove this limitation, so in 1995, Netscape decided to add a programming language to Navigator. They pursued two paths to achieve this goal: partnering with Sun Microsystems to embed the Java programming language, while also hiring Brendan Eich to embed the Scheme language.
Netscape management soon decided that the best option for Eich was to invent a new language, with a syntax similar to Java and less similar to Scheme or other existing programming languages. Although the new language and its interpreter implementation were first called LiveScript as part of a beta release in September 1995, the name was changed to JavaScript for the official release in December.
The choice of the name JavaScript has caused confusion and implies that it is directly related to Java. At the time, the dot-com boom had begun and Java was a popular new language, so Ich considered the name JavaScript a marketing ploy by Netscape. But the original design goal was actually a completely separate “language for the masses” or “to help non-programmers create dynamic and interactive websites.” Of course, that was no longer the case with the advent of standalone JavaScript runtimes such as Netscape’s LiveWire Pro web development tool and Ajax, ServerJS, asm.js, and node.js.
Approved by Microsoft
Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer in 1995, which led to a browser war with Netscape. On the JavaScript front, Microsoft reverse-engineered the Navigator interpreter to create its own interpreter called JScript.
JavaScript was first released in 1996, along with initial support for CSS and HTML extensions. Each of these implementations differed significantly from their Navigator counterparts. These differences made it difficult for developers to make their websites work well in both browsers, leading to the widespread use of the "Best Viewed in Netscape" and "Best Viewed in Internet Explorer" logos for several years.
The emergence of JScript
In November 1996, Netscape submitted JavaScript to Ecma International as a starting point for a standard specification that all browser vendors could conform to. This led to the official publication of the first ECMAScript language specification in June 1997.
The standards process continued for several years, with the release of ECMAScript 2 in June 1998 and ECMAScript 3 in December 1999. Work on ECMAScript 4 began in 2000.
Meanwhile, Microsoft increasingly took a dominant position in the browser market. By the early 2000s, Internet Explorer's market share reached 95 percent. This meant that JScript became the de facto standard for client-side scripting on the Web.
Microsoft initially participated in the standards process and implemented some of the proposals in its JScript language, but eventually stopped participating in the Ecma work. Thus, ECMAScript 4 was discontinued.
Growth and standardization
During the dominance of Internet Explorer in the early 2000s, front-end development stagnated. This change began in 2004, when Netscape's successor, Mozilla, released the Firefox browser. Firefox was well-received by many and took significant market share from Internet Explorer.
In 2005, Mozilla joined ECMA International and work began on the ECMAScript for XML (E4X) standard. This led Mozilla to work jointly with Macromedia (later acquired by Adobe Systems) to implement E4X in their ActionScript 3 language, which was based on the ECMAScript 4 draft. The goal was to standardize ActionScript 3 as the new ECMAScript 4. To this end, Adobe Systems released the Tamarin implementation as an open source project. However, Tamarin and ActionScript 3 were very different from standard client-side scripting, and without Microsoft's cooperation, ECMAScript 4 never came to fruition.
Meanwhile, very important developments were taking place in the open source community, not affiliated with the work of ECMA. In 2005, Jesse James Garrett published a white paper in which he coined the term Ajax and described a set of technologies, with JavaScript as the backbone, for creating web applications in which data could be loaded in the background, without requiring a full page reload. This sparked a JavaScript renaissance, led by open source libraries and the communities that formed around them. Many new libraries were created, including jQuery, Prototype, Dojo Toolkit, and MooTools.
Google introduced its Chrome browser in 2008 with a V8 JavaScript engine that was faster than its competitors. The key innovation was just-in-time compilation (JIT), so other browser vendors needed to rebuild their engines for JIT.
In July 2008, these disparate parties came together for a conference in Oslo. This led to a final agreement in early 2009 to combine all related work and move the language forward. The result was the ECMAScript 5 standard, which was published in December 2009.
Reaching puberty
Ambitious work on the language continued for several years, culminating in the release of ECMAScript 6 in 2015, with a vast set of formal additions and fixes.
The creation of Node.js in 2009 by Ryan Dahl led to a significant increase in the use of JavaScript outside of web browsers. Node combines the V8 engine, an event loop, and input/output APIs, resulting in a self-contained JavaScript runtime system. As of 2018, Node was used by millions of developers, and npm had the most modules of any managed package in the world.
The ECMAScript draft specification is now openly maintained on GitHub, and releases are produced through regular annual snapshots. Potential revisions to the language are reviewed through a comprehensive proposal process. Now, instead of version numbers, developers review the status of upcoming features individually.
The current JavaScript ecosystem has many libraries and frameworks, established programming practices, and significant use of JavaScript outside of web browsers. Additionally, with the rise of single-page applications and other JavaScript-heavy websites, several transpilers have been created to aid in the development process.
Trademark
“JavaScript” is a trademark of Oracle Corporation in the United States. The trademark was originally issued to Sun Microsystems on May 6, 1997, and was transferred to Oracle when they acquired Sun in 2009.
Using the website user side
JavaScript is the dominant client-side scripting language of the web, used by 98% of all websites (mid-2022). Scripts are embedded in or used within HTML documents and interact with the DOM.
All major web browsers have a built-in JavaScript engine that executes code on the user's device.
Examples of scripted behavior
- Loading new content on a web page without reloading the page, via Ajax or WebSocket. For example, social media users can send and receive messages without leaving the current page.
- Web page animations, such as fading objects in and out, resizing them, and moving them around.
- Play browser games.
- Control streaming media playback.
- Create pop-up ads or alert boxes.
- Validating input values of a web form before sending the data to a web server.
- Recording information about user behavior and then sending it to the server. The website owner can use this data for analytics, ad tracking, and personalization.
- Redirect the user to another page.
- Store and retrieve data on the user's device, via storage or IndexedDB standards.
Web libraries and frameworks
By 2012, over 80% of websites used a third-party JavaScript library or web framework for their client-side scripting.
React
React (also known as React.js or ReactJS) is a free and open-source front-end JavaScript library[41][42] for building component-based user interfaces. It is maintained by Meta (formerly Facebook) and a community of developers and companies.
React can be used to develop single-page, mobile, or server-rendered applications with frameworks like Next.js. Because React is only concerned with the user interface and rendering components to the DOM, React applications often rely on libraries for routing and other client-side functionality. A key advantage of React is that it only re-renders those parts of the page that have changed, avoiding unnecessary rendering of unchanged DOM elements.
angular
Angular (also referred to as “Angular 2+”)[48] is a free, open-source, TypeScript-based single-page web application framework led by the Angular team at Google and by a community of individuals and companies. Angular is a complete rewrite by the same team that created AngularJS.
jQuery
In 2012, jQuery was the most popular front-end library, used by over 75% of websites. While it is still widely used, its popularity has been surpassed by newer libraries and frameworks.
Vanilla JS
Framework names like “Vanilla JS” are just another name for plain old JavaScript. It was invented for websites that don’t use any libraries or frameworks at all, instead relying entirely on standard JavaScript functionality.
Other uses
The use of JavaScript has expanded beyond its web browser roots. JavaScript engines are now embedded in a variety of other software systems, both for server-side website deployment and for non-browser applications.
Early attempts to promote server-side JavaScript use were Netscape Enterprise Server and Microsoft Internet Information Services, but they were small niches. Server-side use finally began to grow in the late 2000s with the creation of Node.js and other approaches.
Electron, Cordova, React Native, and other application frameworks have been used to create many applications with behavior implemented in JavaScript. Other non-browser applications include Adobe Acrobat support for scripting PD documents and GNOME Shell extensions written in JavaScript.
JavaScript has recently appeared in some embedded systems, usually using Node.js.
Execution environment
JavaScript typically relies on a runtime environment (e.g., a web browser) to provide objects and methods by which scripts can interact with the environment (e.g., a web page DOM). These environments are single-threaded. JavaScript also relies on the runtime environment to provide the ability to include/import scripts (e.g., <script> elements). HTML) را فراهم کند. این به خودی خود یک ویژگی زبان نیست، اما در اکثر پیاده سازی های جاوا اسکریپت رایج است. جاوا اسکریپت پیام های یک صف را در یک زمان پردازش می کند. جاوا اسکریپت یک تابع مرتبط با هر پیام جدید را فراخوانی می کند و یک فریم پشته تماس با آرگومان های تابع و متغیرهای محلی ایجاد می کند. پشته تماس بر اساس نیازهای تابع کوچک شده و رشد می کند. هنگامی که پشته تماس پس از تکمیل تابع خالی است، جاوا اسکریپت به پیام بعدی در صف ادامه میدهد. این حلقه رویداد نامیده می شود که به عنوان “اجرا تا تکمیل” توصیف می شود زیرا هر پیام قبل از در نظر گرفتن پیام بعدی به طور کامل پردازش می شود. با این حال، مدل همزمانی زبان، حلقه رویداد را غیر مسدودکننده توصیف میکند: ورودی/خروجی برنامه با استفاده از رویدادها و توابع پاسخ به تماس انجام میشود. این بدان معناست که، برای مثال، جاوا اسکریپت میتواند یک کلیک ماوس را در حالی که منتظر یک پرس و جو پایگاه داده برای بازگرداندن اطلاعات است، پردازش کند.
Result
Today, we can use JavaScript to write all kinds of programs, including browser, server, mobile, and desktop applications. We hope this article has given you a good understanding of the history of the most popular programming language on the internet today.
