JavaScript History

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JavaScript History


JavaScript / ECMAScript
JavaScript was invented by Brendan Eich in 1995.
It was developed for Netscape 2, and became the ECMA-262 standard in 1997.
After Netscape handed JavaScript over to ECMA, the Mozilla foundation
continued to develop 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
ECMABrowser


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 Safari 10


2017
ES6
Full support for ES6 in Firefox 54


2017
ES6
Full support for ES6 in Edge 15


2018
ES6
Full support for ES6 in all browsers **



Note
* Internet Explorer 9 did not support ES5 "use strict".
** Internet Explorer 11 does not support ES6.


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 got together in Oslo in 2008, to agree on ECMAScript 4, they were divided into
2 very different camps:
The ECMAScript 3.1 Camp:
Microsoft and Yahoo who wanted an incremental upgrade from ES3.
The ECMAScript 4 Camp:
Adobe, Mozilla, Opera, and Google who wanted a massive ES4 upgrade.
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, with some members
favoring ES4, a major fourth edition to ECMA-262, and others
advocating ES3.1 based on the existing ECMA-262 Edition 3 (ES3)
specification. Now, I'm happy to report, the split is over.
The solution was to work together:

ECMAScript 4 was renamed to ES5
ES5 should be an incremental upgrade of ECMAScript 3.
Features of ECMAScript 4 should be picked up in later versions.
TC39 should develop a new major release, bigger in scope than ES5.

The planned new release (ES6) was codenamed "Harmony" (Because of the split it created?).
ES5 was a huge success. It was released in 2009, and all major browsers (including Internet Explorer) were fully
compliant by July 2013:










Chrome 23
IE10 / Edge
Firefox 21
Safari 6
Opera 15


Nov 2012
Sep 2012
May 2013
Jul 2012
Jul 2013



ES6 was also a huge success. It was released in 2015, and all major browsers were fully compliant by March 2017:










Chrome 51
Edge 14
Firefox 52
Safari 10
Opera 38


May 2016
Aug 2016
Mar 2017
Sep 2016
Jun 2016















★
+1

Reference: https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_history.asp