What are javascripts?

Hey all! How are you doing my dear readers?! :) I hope all of you are just great, like always! ;) :D :D

So, it was the fourth day of training an this training thing will extend upto 30th July. That means all my holidays are gonna be ransacked by acute busy schedules! >_< But whatever, it's not so interesting though because I'm not liking the place, but still it's okay, I hope I'll start enjoying it soon. Anyways, I'm learning web development that means I might tweak my blog a little once my training is over! LOL! MAYBE!! :P

Maybe my today's post is a result of this training only! LOL! Whatever! Today they were discussing about javascripts there and it were an interesting discussion, still I said that I ain't enjoying much because the teacher is unable to answer some questions that makes me irritated! >_< So this post is more of a self-reference post that would be a bit too knowledgeable for me! :D




JavaScript (sometimes abbreviated JS) is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.


JavaScript was formalized in the ECMAScript language standard and is primarily used in the form of client-side JavaScript, implemented as part of a Web browser in order to give enhanced user interfaces and dynamic websites. This enables programmatic access to computational objects within a host environment.


JavaScript's use in applications outside 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 have also increased the popularity of JavaScript for server-side web applications.


JavaScript uses syntax influenced by that of C. JavaScript copies many names and naming conventions from Java, but the two languages are otherwise unrelated and have very different semantics. Example - Termination of each line is compulsory in JAVA but not in javascript. The key design principles within JavaScript are taken from the Self and Scheme programming languages.


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 Microsystem's 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 VB.


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 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. It has also been claimed that the language's name is the result of a co-marketing deal between Netscape and Sun, in exchange for Netscape bundling Sun's Java runtime with its then-dominant browser.


Today, "JavaScript" is a trademark of Oracle Corporation. It is used under license for technology invented and implemented by Netscape Communications and current entities such as the Mozilla Foundation.


The most common use of JavaScript is to write functions that are embedded in or included from HTML pages and that interact with the Document Object Model (DOM) of the page. Some simple examples of this usage are:

• Loading new page content or submitting data to the server via AJAX without reloading the page (for example, a social network might allow the user to post status updates without leaving the page)
• Animation of page elements, fading them in and out, resizing them, moving them, etc.
• Interactive content, for example games, and playing audio and video
• Validating input values of a web form to make sure that they are acceptable before being submitted to the server.
• Transmitting information about the user's reading habits and browsing activities to various websites. Web pages frequently do this for web analytics, ad tracking, personalization or other purposes.

Because JavaScript code can run locally in a user's browser (rather than on a remote server), the browser can respond to user actions quickly, making an application more responsive. Furthermore, JavaScript code can detect user actions which HTML alone cannot, such as individual keystrokes. Applications such as Gmail take advantage of this: much of the user-interface logic is written in JavaScript, and JavaScript dispatches requests for information (such as the content of an e-mail message) to the server. The wider trend of Ajax programming similarly exploits this strength.


Because JavaScript runs in widely varying environments, an important part of testing and debugging is to test and verify that the JavaScript works across multiple browsers.


The DOM interfaces for manipulating web pages are not part of the ECMAScript standard, or of JavaScript itself. Officially, the DOM interfaces are defined by a separate standardization effort by the W3C; in practice, browser implementations differ from the standards and from each other, and not all browsers execute JavaScript.


To deal with these differences, JavaScript authors can attempt to write standards-compliant code which will also be executed correctly by most browsers; failing that, they can write code that checks for the presence of certain browser features and behaves differently if they are not available. In some cases, two browsers may both implement a feature but with different behavior, and authors may find it practical to detect what browser is running and change their script's behavior to match. Programmers may also use libraries or toolkits which take browser differences into account.


Source of this info


A nice Javascript Tutorial is available here.

In short we see that javascript is a light-weight scripting language that helps convert static HTML based pages into dynamic pages which interact in real-time! :) Now I must take a leave since I have to go somewhere! All suggestions and comments are welcomed as always! :) Good evening everyone, See you all soon! ^_^