ECMAScript

Filename extension	.es
Internet media type	application/ecmascript[1]
Developed by	Sun Microsystems, Ecma International
Initial release	June 1997
Latest release	Edition 5.1 / June 2011; 12 months ago  (June 2011)
Type of format	Scripting language
Extended from	JavaScript
Website	ECMA-262, ECMA-290, ECMA-327, ECMA-357

ECMAScript is the scripting language standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification and ISO/IEC 16262. The language is widely used for client-side scripting on the web, in the form of several well-known dialects such as JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript.

History[link]

JavaScript was originally developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape under the name Mocha, later LiveScript, and finally renamed to JavaScript.^[2] In December 1995, Sun Microsystems and Netscape announced JavaScript in a press release.^[3] In March 1996, Netscape Navigator 2.0 was released, featuring support for JavaScript.

Due to the widespread success of JavaScript as a client-side scripting language for web pages, Microsoft developed a compatible dialect of the language, naming it JScript to avoid trademark issues. JScript added new date methods to fix the non-Y2K-friendly methods in JavaScript, which were based on the Java Date class.^[4] JScript was included in Internet Explorer 3.0, released in August 1996.

Netscape delivered JavaScript to Ecma International for standardization and the work on the specification, ECMA-262, began in November 1996.^[5] The first edition of ECMA-262 was adopted by the Ecma General Assembly of June 1997. Several editions of the language standard have been published since then.

ECMAScript is the name of the scripting language standardized in ECMA-262. The name "ECMAScript" was a compromise between the organizations involved in standardizing the language, especially Netscape and Microsoft, whose disputes dominated the early standards sessions. Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, commented that "ECMAScript was always an unwanted trade name that sounds like a skin disease."^[6]

While both JavaScript and JScript aim to be compatible with ECMAScript, they also provide additional features not described in the ECMA specifications.

Versions[link]

There are five editions of ECMA-262 published. Work on a future edition, codenamed "Harmony", is in progress.

In June 2004, Ecma International published ECMA-357 standard, defining an extension to ECMAScript, known as ECMAScript for XML (E4X).

Ecma also defined a "Compact Profile" for ECMAScript — known as ES-CP, or ECMA 327 — which is designed for resource-constrained devices. Several of the dynamic features of ECMAScript (such as the eval function) are made optional, thus allowing the runtime to make more assumptions about the behaviour of programs and therefore make more performance trade-offs when running the code. The HD DVD standard was one place where the ECMAScript Compact Profile was used in favour of full ECMAScript to reduce processing and memory needs on devices.

Features[link]

The ECMAScript language includes structured, dynamic, functional, and prototype-based features, as officially summarized here.^[8]

Syntax[link]

Dialects[link]

ECMAScript is supported in many applications, especially web browsers, where it is implemented by JavaScript, or, in the case of Internet Explorer, JScript. Dialects sometimes include extensions to the language, or to the standard library and related application programming interfaces (API) such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specified Document Object Model (DOM). This means that applications written in one dialect may be incompatible with another, unless they are written to use only a common subset of supported features and APIs.

Version correspondence[link]

The following table is based on tedster's history compilation forum post^[9] and Microsoft's JScript version information webpage.^[10] Items on the same line are approximately the same language.

Conformance tests[link]

In 2010, Ecma International started developing a standards test for Ecma 262 ECMAScript. Test262 is an ECMAScript conformance test suite that can be used to check how closely a JavaScript implementation follows the ECMAScript 5th Edition Specification. The test suite contains thousands of individual tests, each of which tests some specific requirements of the ECMAScript specification.

Development of Test262 is a project of Ecma Technical Committee 39 (TC39). The testing framework and individual tests are created by member organizations of TC39 and contributed to Ecma for use in Test262.

Important contributions were made by Google (Sputnik testsuite) and Microsoft who both contributed thousands of tests.

The Test262 testsuite already contains more than 11,000 tests and is being developed further as of 2012^[update].

The following table shows current conformance results of browser products. Lower scores are better, although scores can not be compared as tests are not weighted.

Future development[link]

The proposed fourth edition of ECMA-262 (ECMAScript 4 or ES4) would have been the first major update to ECMAScript since the third edition was published in 1999. The specification (along with a reference implementation) was originally targeted for completion by October 2008.^[12] An overview of the language was released by the working group on October 22, 2007.

As of August 2008, the ECMAScript 4th edition proposal has been scaled back into a project codenamed ECMAScript Harmony.

Features under discussion[link]

Features under discussion for a future edition (originally "ECMAScript 4"; now ECMAScript Harmony) include:

• Classes
• A module system
• Optional type annotations and static typing, probably using a structural type system
• Generators and iterators
• Destructuring assignment
• Algebraic data types

The intent of these features is partly to better support programming in the large, and to allow sacrificing some of the script's ability to be dynamic to improve performance. For example, Tamarin — the virtual machine for ActionScript developed and open sourced by Adobe — has just-in-time compilation (JIT) support for certain classes of scripts.

Bug fixes and backwards compatibility[link]

In addition to introducing new features, some ES3 bugs were proposed to be fixed in edition 4.^[13][14] These fixes and others, and support for JSON encoding/decoding, have been folded into the ECMAScript, 5th Edition specification.^[15]

History[link]

Work started on Edition 4 after the ES-CP (Compact Profile) specification was completed, and continued for approximately 18 months where slow progress was made balancing the theory of Netscape's JavaScript 2 specification with the implementation experience of Microsoft's JScript .NET. After some time, the focus shifted to the ECMAScript for XML (E4X) standard.The update has not been without controversy. In late 2007, a debate between Eich, now the Mozilla Foundation's CTO, and Chris Wilson, Microsoft's platform architect for Internet Explorer, became public on a number of blogs. Wilson cautioned that because the proposed changes to ECMAScript made it backwards incompatible in some respects to earlier versions of the language, the update amounted to "breaking the Web,"^[16] and that stakeholders who opposed the changes were being "hidden from view".^[17] Eich responded by stating that Wilson seemed to be "repeating falsehoods in blogs" and denied that there was attempt to suppress dissent and challenging critics to give specific examples of incompatibility.^[18] He also pointed out that Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe AIR rely on C# and ActionScript 3 respectively, both of which are larger and more complex than ECMAScript Edition 3.^[19]

ECMAScript, 5th Edition[link]

Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and other 4th edition dissenters formed their own subcommittee to design a less ambitious update of ECMAScript 3, tentatively named ECMAScript 3.1. This edition would focus on security and library updates with a large emphasis on compatibility. After the aforementioned public sparring, the ECMAScript 3.1 and ECMAScript 4 teams agreed on a compromise: the two editions would be worked on, in parallel, with coordination between the teams to ensure that ECMAScript 3.1 remains a strict subset of ECMAScript 4 in both semantics and syntax.

However, the differing philosophies in each team resulted in repeated breakages of the subset rule, and it remained doubtful that the ECMAScript 4 dissenters would ever support or implement ECMAScript 4 in the future. After over a year since the disagreement over the future of ECMAScript within the Ecma Technical Committee 39, the two teams reached a new compromise in July 2008: Brendan Eich announced that Ecma TC39 would focus work on the ECMAScript 3.1 (later renamed to ECMAScript, 5th Edition) project with full collaboration of all parties, and vendors would target at least two interoperable implementations by early 2009.^[20][21] In April 2009, Ecma TC39 published the "final" draft of the 5th edition and announced that testing of interoperable implementations was expected to be completed by mid-July.^[22] On December 3, 2009, ECMA-262 5th edition was published.^[23]

ECMAScript Harmony[link]

In the July 2008 announcement, Eich also stated that the ECMAScript 4 proposal would be superseded by a new project, code-named ECMAScript Harmony. ECMAScript Harmony names the agreed design trajectory of post-ES5 editions. It will include syntactic extensions, but the changes will be more modest than ECMAScript 4 in both semantic and syntactic innovation. Packages, namespaces, and early binding from ECMAScript 4 are no longer included for planned releases. In addition, other goals and ideas from ECMAScript 4 are being rephrased to keep consensus in the committee; these include a notion of classes based on ECMAScript, 5th Edition (being an update to ECMAScript, 3rd edition).^[24] As of December 2009^[update], there is no publicly announced release date for next edition within the ECMAScript Harmony trajectory. Depending on Ecma, that next edition may end up being called ECMAScript, 6th edition.

See also[link]

• ActionScript
• Comparison of layout engines (ECMAScript)
• Document Object Model (DOM)
• ECMAScript for XML (E4X)
• JavaScript
• JScript
• Server-side JavaScript
• List of ECMAScript engines
• Qt Meta (or Modeling) Language (QML)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• The World of ECMAScript : John Resig's map on ECMAScript

ISO Standard

• ISO 16262

Ecma Standards

• ECMA-262
  • ECMA-262 ECMAScript Language Specification 3rd edition (December 1999)
  • ECMAScript Language Specification, Edition 3 Final, 24-Mar-00
  • ECMA-262 ECMAScript Language Specification 5th edition (December 2009)
  • ECMA-262 ECMAScript Language Specification 5.1 edition (June 2011)
• ECMA-290 ECMAScript Components Specification (June 1999)
• ECMA-327 ECMAScript 3rd Edition Compact Profile (June 2001)
• ECMA-357 ECMAScript for XML (E4X) Specification (June 2004)

David Herman (born February 20, 1967) is an American actor, comedian and voice actor best known as an original cast member of MADtv and for his role as Michael Bolton in Office Space. He is also known for his voice roles on television programs such as Futurama, King of the Hill, and Beavis and Butt-head.

Biography[link]

David Herman was born in New York City and raised in Washington Heights. He graduated from the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in 1987, then attended the acting program at SUNY Purchase. Herman appeared in the films Born on the Fourth of July, Lost Angels and Let It Be Me, but he is probably best known for his role as Michael Bolton in Mike Judge's Office Space. Earlier, Herman had joined the cast of John Leguizamo's House of Buggin' in 1994; however, that show was short-lived. When Fox decided to mount a sketch comedy show to replace House of Buggin', Herman was kept on as an original MADtv cast member.

Career[link]

[edit] MADtv

Herman was one of nine original cast members of MADtv when the series debuted in 1995. Unlike the other original repertory and featured players, he was one of the few cast members who came to the show with an established acting career. Herman's MADtv characters included Mike Lawson (Incredible Findings), Generation X anchorman Marsh (X News), and concerned father Joel Linder. Former cast-mate Artie Lange referred to Herman as "a brilliant, talented actor" and called him "one of my best friends in show business."

Herman lampooned celebrities and famous figures such as Tom Hanks, Woody Allen, Joel Schumacher, Regis Philbin, Alex Trebek, Brent Spiner, Pauly Shore, Bill Clinton, Patrick Stewart, Larry King, John Ritter, Bob Dole, Larry Flynt, David Duchovny, Nicolas Cage, Robert Shapiro, Tim Allen, and Kenny Kingston.

Herman was a repertory performer on the show for two and a half seasons. He left MADtv in the middle of the show's third season (1997–98) to pursue a movie career and other projects.

Other television projects[link]

Herman's television credits include guest starring on the WB's Angel and Fox's action drama 24.

Film projects[link]

Although he is primarily a television actor, Herman has appeared in several films including Dude, Where's My Car? and Fun with Dick and Jane. Herman had a prominent role in the 1999 comedy Office Space, where he played a gangsta rap-loving nerd unfortunately named Michael Bolton who must endure questions about his relationship to the famous singer. In 2006, he appeared in another Mike Judge film, Idiocracy.

Voice acting projects[link]

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Herman is also known for his work as a voice actor in video games and cartoons, notably in Futurama, where he provides the voices of many recurring characters and King of the Hill, where he provided incidental character voices. His other voice work includes American Dad!, Invader Zim, Father of the Pride and the Jak and Daxter video game series. He starred as Ubuntu Goode (and other supporting voices) in Mike Judge's animated series, The Goode Family. More recently, he voiced a character in Fox's Bob's Burgers. Recently, Herman has been providing voices for Mike Judge's Beavis and Butt-head.

Filmography[link]

Voice Acting Roles[link]