ECMAScript

Draft

Definition

“ECMAScript is a scripting programming language, standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification. The language is widely used on the web, and is often referred to as JavaScript or JScript, after the two primary implementations of the specification.” (Wikipedia), retrieved 12:49, 22 May 2007 (MEST)).

Related entries: Scripting language, JavaScript links, AJAX, SVG, XHTML, Sharable Content Object Reference Model, ....

Short history

See the Wikipedia article for the moment ...

References

Consult ecmascript.org for news.

Standards

• ECMA-262 ECMAScript Language Specification 3rd edition (E262-3) (December 1999)

• E262-3 at Mozilla.org

• Standard ECMA-357, ECMAScript for XML (E4X) Specification, 2nd edition (December 2005)
  • This is a new standard that isn't very much implemented yet.

Under preparation

• ECMAScript 3.1 (early 2009) ?
  • See ECMAScript Harmony for a discussion

Failed standards

• ECMAScript 4, a draft specification that was the basis for JavaScript 2.0 (Firefox) and ActionScript 3 (Adobe) has been given up by the Technical committe in Aug 2008. There will be a version 4 sometimes, but for instance packages are dropped. Read some comments:
  • ECMAScript Harmony
  • JavaScript Stalled, AS3 Orphaned - Microsoft to Blame? (Grant Skinner, Aug 2008)
  • Ru Roh! Adobe Screwed By EcmaScript Standards Agreement (Hank Williams, Aug 2008).

Manuals

Human readable ECMAScript manuals don't seem to exist. We therefore suggest to consult JavaScript manuals, in particular

• The Mozilla documentation:
  • Core JavaScript Reference
  • Core JavaScript Guide Primary Mozilla reference for programmers
  • JScript Deviations from ES3 (PDF doc from Microsoft), Retrieved April 2008.

Daniel K. Schneider doesn't know how good a various implementations are. Probably none is 100% correct ECMA-357-3. On the other hand, most 2008 browsers (IE7, FF2, Opera 9, etc.) implement ECMA-357 reasonably well. The trouble is DOM, i.e. DOM level 2 and 3 HTML and XML bindings.

Overviews

• language overview whitepaper (oct 2007)

Tutorials

• Object-Oriented JavaScript, Webreference, 2007 by Cristian Darie, Bogdan Brinzarea

• evolutionary programming in ES4, 2007

E4X

See ECMAscript for XML

• Fremantle, Paul and Anthony Elder (1005). AJAX and scripting Web services with E4X, Part 1, IBM Works, HTML

• E4X Tutorial, W3Schools.

• Introducing E4X (by Kurt Cagle, xml.com, nov 2007)

Other links

• http://www.ecmascript.org/