JavaScript was originally developed by Netscape as LiveScript for client-side scripting in Netscape Navigator 2, and later renamed to JavaScript with input from Sun Microsystems; both Netscape and Microsoft worked to standardize JavaScript through ECMA-262 to ensure compatibility between Navigator and Internet Explorer; while both browsers support the core JavaScript language and DOM, they implemented different capabilities for dynamically modifying page content after loading.
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JavaScript was originally developed by Netscape as LiveScript for client-side scripting in Netscape Navigator 2, and later renamed to JavaScript with input from Sun Microsystems; both Netscape and Microsoft worked to standardize JavaScript through ECMA-262 to ensure compatibility between Navigator and Internet Explorer; while both browsers support the core JavaScript language and DOM, they implemented different capabilities for dynamically modifying page content after loading.
JavaScript was originally developed by Netscape as LiveScript for client-side scripting in Netscape Navigator 2, and later renamed to JavaScript with input from Sun Microsystems; both Netscape and Microsoft worked to standardize JavaScript through ECMA-262 to ensure compatibility between Navigator and Internet Explorer; while both browsers support the core JavaScript language and DOM, they implemented different capabilities for dynamically modifying page content after loading.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PS, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
JavaScript was originally developed by Netscape as LiveScript for client-side scripting in Netscape Navigator 2, and later renamed to JavaScript with input from Sun Microsystems; both Netscape and Microsoft worked to standardize JavaScript through ECMA-262 to ensure compatibility between Navigator and Internet Explorer; while both browsers support the core JavaScript language and DOM, they implemented different capabilities for dynamically modifying page content after loading.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PS, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Download as ps, pdf, or txt
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JavaScript
Netscape Navigator v. 2 provided client-side scripting with
JavaScript JavaScript was developed by Netscape under the name LiveScript
Sun and Netscape decided to put the word ’Java’ into
LiveScript changing the name to JavaScript (marketing...)
Syntax similarities between Java and JavaScript existed
before the name change
Internet Explorer (IE) 3 provided VBScript and JScript
(almost 100% compatible with JavaScript in Navigator 2) JavaScript and Support for It Important to distinguish programming language from DOM: programming language provides data types, variables, control structures etc., and is independent from DOM (this is core JavaScript).
To ensure compatibility between Microsoft’s and
Netscape’s versions of JavaScript both companies worked with the European Computer Standards group. The work resulted in ECMA-262 (known as ECMAScript)
Both Netscape 4 and IE4 implement ECMAScript
The core JavaScript in Navigator 4 (JavaScript 1.2) is supported by JScript in IE4 almost completely Support for DOM via JavaScript Navigator supports CSS1, but sheets are not very dynamic: can not change style and properties of content already loaded into the browser (to change color of a block of text, need to create content for each color as a separate positioned element and then show and hide these elements dynamically) Navigator supports CSS-P Navigator also provides an alternative to CSS-P in the form of <LAYER><LAYER/> tag. Each layer is a holder for content that exists in its own plane suspended above the main document and independent of the main document and other layers. New layers can be created after a page has been loaded using JavaScript. Support for DOM via JavaScript For portability Netscape treats a positionable elements defined via CSS-P syntax or the <LAYER> tag as the same kind of object
Netscape capabilities to produce content dynamically are
quite limited. All it can do is: swap images in place, load new content into a layer, set location of a positionable element. Support for DOM via JavaScript IE4 provides many facilities for modifying content of a page after the page has been loaded. Virtually every element defined by HTML is exposed to scripting.
IE4 supports W3C’s recommendation on CSS1 almost in
its entirety
IE4 not only supports CSS-P, but also allows you to apply CSS-P attributes to individual HTML elements (can assign visibility and position to an image even if it is not surrounded by <DIV> or <SPAN> tag) Support for DOM via JavaScript IE’s rendering engine is capable of quickly re-rendering modified HTML content (unlike Netscape’s rendering engine). Therefore, most properties can be changed on the fly: can increase the size of text within <H3></H3> tags to <H1></H1>.
Both Netscape and IE4 bubble events
(see bubble-event.html example) Cross-Platform Strategies Page Branching server determines browser type/version and serves appropriate page (can use CGI and other server-side technologies) browser first loads an HTML page with unscripted content and a script that can load proper scripted page based on the browser type/version
Internal Branching see internal-branching.html example (look at the page source inside browser) Common Denominator Design use only features supported by ALL major browsers
Custom API design a set of library functions (in JavaScript) and reference them from all HTML files. each function contains code for Netscape and IE4 and extends the vocabulary of the language. Cross-Platform Strategies What’s the best strategy? Limitations of JavaScript Can not do anything beyond HTML- and browser-related tasks
Does not have any graphics capabilities
Can’t read from or write to files (security restrictions)
Does not support networking (but can make a Web
browser download an arbitrary URL)
Does not have multithreading capabilities
What JavaScript Can Do Can write arbitrary HTML into the document
Can generate documents from scratch
Can control browser
open new windows, change appearance of windows, access history and move forward and backward, display messages in the status line)
Can interact with forms (check and set fields)
seeform-validate1.htmlexample What JavaScript Can Do Can interact with the user see form-validate1.html example above
