JavaScript History
JavaScript / ECMAScript
JavaScript was invented by Brendan Eich in 1995.
It was developed for the Netscape browser, 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 4 was the first browser to support ECMAScript 1 (ES1).
Internet Explorer 10 was the first browser to support ECMAScript 5 (ES5).
Internet Explorer 11 was the last version of Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer 11 primarily supported ES5. It lacked support for most ES6 features.
Microsoft ended the support for Internet Explorer in 2022.
| Year | ECMA | Browser |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
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:
| 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:
| May 2016 | Aug 2016 | Mar 2017 | Sep 2016 | Jun 2016 |
