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JavaScript History
javascript / ECMAScript
JavaScript was invented by Brendan Eich in 1995.
It was developed for Netscape 2 and was declared the ECMA-262 standard in 1997.
After Netscape handed JavaScript to ECMA, the Mozilla foundation continued to create JavaScript for the Firefox browser. Mozilla’s latest version was 1.8.5. (Identical to ES5).
Internet Explorer (IE4) was the first browser to support ECMA-262 Edition 1 (ES1).
Year | ECMA | Browser |
1995 | – | JavaScript was invented by Brendan Eich |
1996 | – | Netscape 2 was released with JavaScript 1.0 |
1997 | – | JavaScript became an ECMA standard (ECMA-262) |
1997 | ES1 | ECMAScript 1 was released |
1997 | ES1 | IE 4 was the first browser to support ES1 |
1998 | ES2 | ECMAScript 2 was released |
1998 | – | Netscape 42 was released with JavaScript 1.3 |
1999 | ES2 | IE 5 was the first browser to support ES2 |
1999 | ES3 | ECMAScript 3 was released |
2000 | ES3 | IE 5.5 was the first browser to support ES3 |
2000 | – | Netscape 62 was released with JavaScript 1.5 |
2000 | – | Firefox 1 was released with JavaScript 1.5 |
2008 | ES4 | ECMAScript 4 was abandoned |
2009 | ES5 | ECMAScript 5 was released |
2011 | ES5 | IE 9 was the first browser to support ES5 * |
2011 | ES5 | Firefox 4 was released with JavaScript 1.8.5 |
2012 | ES5 | Full support for ES5 in Safari 6 |
2012 | ES5 | Full support for ES5 in IE 10 |
2012 | ES5 | Full support for ES5 in Chrome 23 |
2013 | ES5 | Full support for ES5 in Firefox 21 |
2013 | ES5 | Full support for ES5 in Opera 15 |
2014 | ES5 | Full support for ES5 in all browsers |
2015 | ES6 | ECMAScript 6 was released |
2016 | ES6 | Full support for ES6 in Chrome 51 |
2016 | ES6 | Full support for ES6 in Opera 38 |
2016 | ES6 | Full support for ES6 in Edge 14 |
2016 | ES6 | Full support for ES6 in Safari 10 |
2015 | ES6 | Full support for ES6 in Firefox 52 |
2018 | ES6 | Full support for ES6 in all browsers ** |
The ECMA Technical Committee 39
In 1996, Netscape and Brendan Eich took JavaScript to the ECMA international standards organization, and a technical committee (TC39) was created to develop the language.
ECMA-262 Edition 1 was released in June 1997.
From ES4 to ES6
When the TC39 committee came together in Oslo in 2008, to agree to work
Microsoft and Yahoo wanted an incremental upgrade from ES3.
The ECMAScript 4 Camp:
Adobe, Mozilla, Opera, and Google wanted a massive ES4 upgrade.
On August 13, 2008, Brendan Eich wrote an email:
It’s no secret that the JavaScript standards body, Ecma’s Technical Committee 39, has been split for over a year, some members favored ES4, a major fourth edition to ECMA-262, and others advocated ES3.1 which was based on the existing ECMA-262 Edition 3 (ES3) specification. According to the reports, the split is over.
The solution was to work together:
- ECMAScript 4 was renamed ES5.
- ES5 should be an incremental upgrade of ECMAScript 3.
- Features of ECMAScript 4 should be picked up in later versions.
- TC39 developed a new major release, that had a larger scope than ES5.