JavaScript

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Not to be confused with Java (programming language), Javanese script,
or ECMAScript.
".js" redirects here. For the Microsoft dialect used in Internet Explorer, see JScript.
"Live script" redirects here. For the programming notebook paradigm, see MATLAB.
For the uses of JavaScript on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:JavaScript.

JavaScript

Screenshot of JavaScript source code with HTML

Paradigm Multi-paradigm: event-driven, functional, imperativ

e, procedural, object-oriented programming

Designed by Brendan Eich of Netscape initially; others have also

contributed to the ECMAScript standard

First appeared December 4, 1995; 26 years ago[1]

Stable release ECMAScript 2021[2]   / June 2021; 16 months ago

Preview release ECMAScript 2022[3]   / 22 July 2021; 14 months

ago
 Typing Dynamic, weak, duck

discipline

 .js
Filename
 .cjs
extensions
 .mjs [4]

Website www.ecma-international.org/publications-and-

standards/standards/ecma-262/

Major implementations

V8, JavaScriptCore, SpiderMonkey, Chakra

Influenced by

Java,[5][6] Scheme,[6] Self,[7] AWK,[8] HyperTalk[9]

Influenced

ActionScript, AssemblyScript, CoffeeScript, Dart, Haxe, JS++, Objecti

ve-J, Opa, TypeScript

  JavaScript at Wikibooks

JavaScript (/ˈdʒɑːvəskrɪpt/),[10] often abbreviated to JS, is a programming

language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web,
alongside HTML and CSS.[11] As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on
the client side for webpage behavior,[12] often incorporating third-party libraries.[13] All
major web browsers have a dedicated JavaScript engine to execute
the code on users' devices.
JavaScript is a high-level, often just-in-time compiled language that conforms to
the ECMAScript standard.[14] It has dynamic typing, prototype-based object-
orientation, and first-class functions. It is multi-paradigm, supporting event-
driven, functional, and imperative programming styles. It has application
programming interfaces (APIs) for working with text, dates, regular expressions,
standard data structures, and the Document Object Model (DOM).
The ECMAScript standard does not include any input/output (I/O), such
as networking, storage, or graphics facilities. In practice, the web browser or
other runtime system provides JavaScript APIs for I/O.
JavaScript engines were originally used only in web browsers, but are now core
components of some servers and a variety of applications. The most popular runtime
system for this usage is Node.js.
Although Java and JavaScript are similar in name, syntax, and respective standard
libraries, the two languages are distinct and differ greatly in design.

Contents
  1History
o 1.1Creation at Netscape
o 1.2Adoption by Microsoft
o 1.3The rise of JScript
o 1.4Growth and standardization
o 1.5Reaching maturity
 2Trademark
 3Website client-side usage
o 3.1Examples of scripted behavior
o 3.2Libraries and frameworks
 4Other usage
 5Features
o 5.1Imperative and structured
o 5.2Weakly typed
o 5.3Dynamic
o 5.4Object-orientation (prototype-based)
o 5.5Functional
o 5.6Delegative
o 5.7Miscellaneous
o 5.8Vendor-specific extensions
 6Syntax
o 6.1Simple examples
o 6.2More advanced example
 7Security
o 7.1Cross-site vulnerabilities
o 7.2Misplaced trust in the client
o 7.3Misplaced trust in developers
o 7.4Browser and plugin coding errors
o 7.5Sandbox implementation errors
o 7.6Hardware vulnerabilities
 8Development tools
 9Related technologies
o 9.1Java
o 9.2JSON
o 9.3TypeScript
o 9.4WebAssembly
o 9.5Transpilers
 10References
 11Further reading
 12External links

History[edit]
Creation at Netscape[edit]
The first web browser with a graphical user interface, Mosaic, was released in 1993.
Accessible to non-technical people, it played a prominent role in the rapid growth of
the nascent World Wide Web.[15] The lead developers of Mosaic then founded
the Netscape corporation, which released a more polished browser, Netscape
Navigator, in 1994. This quickly became the most-used.[16][17]
During these formative years of the Web, web pages could only be static, lacking the
capability for dynamic behavior after the page was loaded in the browser. There was
a desire in the flourishing web development scene to remove this limitation, so in
1995, Netscape decided to add a scripting language to Navigator. They pursued two
routes to achieve this: collaborating with Sun Microsystems to embed
the Java programming language, while also hiring Brendan Eich to embed
the Scheme language.[6]
Netscape management soon decided that the best option was for Eich to devise a
new language, with syntax similar to Java and less like Scheme or other extant
scripting languages.[5][6] Although the new language and its interpreter implementation
were called LiveScript when first shipped as part of a Navigator beta in September
1995, the name was changed to JavaScript for the official release in December. [6][1][18]
The choice of the JavaScript name has caused confusion, implying that it is directly
related to Java. At the time, the dot-com boom had begun and Java was the hot new
language, so Eich considered the JavaScript name a marketing ploy by Netscape. [19]
Adoption by Microsoft[edit]
Microsoft debuted Internet Explorer in 1995, leading to a browser war with Netscape.
On the JavaScript front, Microsoft reverse-engineered the Navigator interpreter to
create its own, called JScript.[20]
JScript was first released in 1996, alongside initial support for CSS and extensions
to HTML. Each of these implementations was noticeably different from their
counterparts in Navigator.[21][22] These differences made it difficult for developers to
make their websites work well in both browsers, leading to widespread use of "best
viewed in Netscape" and "best viewed in Internet Explorer" logos for several years. [21]
[23]