ECMA 262 Brief History

Standard ECMA-262
ECMAScript Language Specification

5^th edition (December 2009)

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262-arch.htm

Brief History

This ECMA Standard is based on several originating technologies, the most well-known being JavaScript (Netscape
Communications) and Jscript (Microsoft Corporation).

The language was invented by Brendan Eich at Netscape and
first appeared in that company’s Navigator 2.0 browser.

 It has appeared in all subsequent browsers from Netscape
and in all browsers from Microsoft starting with Internet Explorer 3.0.

The development of this Standard started in November 1996.
The first edition of this ECMA Standard was adopted
by the ECMA General Assembly of June 1997.

That ECMA Standard was submitted to ISO/IEC JTC 1 for adoption under the fast-track procedure, and approved as
international standard ISO/IEC 16262, in April 1998.

The ECMA General Assembly of June 1998 has approved the
second edition of ECMA-262 to keep it fully aligned with ISO/IEC 16262.

Changes from the first edition are editorial in nature.
The work on standardization of the language continues to support regular expressions, richer control statements and
better string handling, in addition to the core language standardized in the first two editions of the ECMA Standard.
These features and others, such as try/catch exception handling and better internationalization facilities, are being
documented in anticipation of the third edition of the standard about the end of 1999 which will contain the second
version of the language.
This