JavaScript Basic

Introduction 2

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.

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 Netscapeand Sun, in exchange for Netscape bundling Sun's Java runtime with its then-dominant browser.[citation needed]

JavaScript very quickly gained widespread success as a client-side scripting language for web pages. Microsoft introduced JavaScript support in its own web browser, Internet Explorer, in version 3.0, released in August 1996.[18][not in citation given] Microsoft's webserver, Internet Information Server, introduced support for server-side scripting in JavaScript with release 3.0 (1996). Microsoft started to promote webpage scripting using the umbrella term Dynamic HTML. Microsoft's JavaScript implementation was later renamed JScript to avoid trademark issues. JScript added new date methods to fix the Y2K-problematic methods in JavaScript, which were based on Java's java.util.Date class.