Lightweight, object oriented, embeddable scripting language
Author: Brendan Eich Homepage: http://www.ecmascript.org/ Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript Family: ScriptLanguage Platform: Runs in browser License: Open Source
JavaScript was originally created for Netscape Navigator 2 by Brendan Eich, and was called LiveScript. It was renamed JavaScript by Netscape Marketing to capitalize on the popularity of the then new Java language. This has led to endless confusion over the years among folks who conflate the two.
It's a lightweight, object oriented scripting language, originally intended to be embedded in web pages and interpreted by the browser, but it has spread to other areas. It's now a formal standard, called ECMAScript, and has been implemented in almost every current web browser. Adobe embeds a version called ActionScript in their software. Products based on the Mozilla codebase such as the ActiveState Komodo programmer's IDE and Songbird media player support it because it's part of the underlying Gecko rendering engine. Web based editors now exist written entirely in JavaScript.