JavaScript History

JavaScript / ECMAScript

JavaScript is Brendan Eich It was invented in 1995.

It is for Netscape 2 developed and became ECMA-262 Standard.

After Netscape handed over JavaScript to ECMA, the Mozilla Foundation continued to develop JavaScript for the Firefox browser. The latest version of Mozilla is 1.8.5. (Same as ES5).

Internet Explorer (IE4) is the first browser to support ECMA-262 Edition 1 (ES1)

Year ECMA Browser
In 1995 JavaScript was invented by Brendan Eich
In 1996 Netscape 2 was released together with JavaScript 1.0
In 1997 JavaScript became an ECMA standard (ECMA-262)
In 1997 ES1 ECMAScript 1 was released
In 1997 ES1 IE 4 is the first browser to support ES1
In 1998 ES2 ECMAScript 2 was released
In 1998 Netscape 4.2 was released together with JavaScript 1.3
In 1999 ES2 IE 5 is the first browser to support ES2
In 1999 ES3 ECMAScript 3 was released
In 2000 ES3 IE 5.5 is the first browser to support ES3
In 2000 Netscape 6.2 was released together with JavaScript 1.5
In 2000 Firefox 1 was released together with JavaScript 1.5
In 2008 ES4 ECMAScript 4 was abandoned
In 2009 ES5 ECMAScript 5 is released
2011 ES5 IE 9 is the first browser to support ES5 *
2011 ES5 was released with Firefox 4 and JavaScript 1.8.5
2012 ES5 Safari 6 fully supports ES5
2012 ES5 IE 10 fully supports ES5
2012 ES5 Chrome 23 fully supports ES5
2013 ES5 Firefox 21 fully supports ES5
2013 ES5 Opera 15 fully supports ES5
2014 ES5 Fully support ES5 in all browsers
2015 ES6 Release of ECMAScript 6
2016 ES6 Chrome 51 fully supports ES6
2016 ES6 Opera 38 fully supports ES6
2016 ES6 Edge 14 fully supports ES6
2016 ES6 Safari 10 fully supports ES6
2015 ES6 Fully support ES6 in Firefox 52
2018 ES6 Fully support ES6 in browsers

*: Internet Explorer 9 does not support ES5 "use strict".

Ecma Technical Committee 39

In 1996, Netscape and Brendan Eich brought JavaScript to the Ecma International standard organization and established a technical committee (TC39) to develop the language.

The first version of ECMA-262 was released in June 1997.

From ES4 to ES6

When the TC39 committee met in Oslo in 2008 to reach an agreement on ECMAScript 4, they formed two completely different camps:

ECMAScript 3.1 Camp:
Microsoft and Yahoo hope to make an incremental upgrade from ES3.
ECMAScript 4 Camp:
Adobe, Mozilla, Opera, and Google, they want a large-scale ES4 upgrade.

On August 13, 2008, Brendan Eich wrote aEmail:

The Ecma International technical committee 39, the standard organization of JavaScript, has been split for more than a year, and this is no secret. Some members support ES4, which is the main fourth version of ECMA-262, while others support the third version (ES3) specification based on the existing ECMA-262 ES3.1. Now, I am glad to report that the split is over.

The solution is to work together:

  • ECMAScript 4 was renamed to ES5
  • ES5 should be an incremental upgrade from ECMAScript 3.
  • The features of ECMAScript 4 should be adopted in future versions.
  • TC39 should develop a new major version with a scope larger than ES5.

The planned new version (ES6) is codenamed "Harmony" (because it caused a split?).

ES5 has achieved great success. It was released in 2009, and by July 2013, all major browsers (including Internet Explorer) were fully compatible:

Chrome IE Firefox Safari Opera
Chrome 23 IE10 / Edge Firefox 21 Safari 6 Opera 15
November 2012 September 2012 May 2013 July 2012 July 2013

ES6 has also achieved great success. It was released in 2015, and by March 2017, all major browsers were fully compatible:

Chrome IE Firefox Safari Opera
Chrome 51 Edge 14 Firefox 52 Safari 10 Opera 38
May 2016 August 2016 March 2017 September 2016 June 2016