Tohir Solomons

EcmaScript vs JavaScript

Posted on the May 31st, 2005 under Uncategorized by Tohir

Is there a difference, and a difference so big its worth having sleepless nights about? This many would consider a stupid argument to have, but one that had to ‘entertain’ yesterday.

Technically, there is a difference and if you want further details, visit Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript.

The argument goes:

W3C mention JavaScript, VBScript, and TCL in passing, but ECMA Script is
the only scripting language that they reference.

>From my understanding, ECMA Script is the common subset of Javascript
that W3C recommends and *should* be supported.

>From this we can deduce that IF you absolutely cannot find an
alternative for a piece of functionality, then use ECMA Scripting as
opposed to JavaScript.

Exactly what is the point here. I fully support cross-browser, accessible, degradable scripting. But does this mean JavaScript is a thing of the past? It’s not going to be supported by browsers anymore? Your page won’t get a W3C validation? This is pure nonsense!

I’ve never seen anyone use: script language=”ecmascript” Has anyone?

We all appreciate efforts to standardize the web, but this argument of ecmascript vs javascript is a total waste of time. If there is browser-specific javascript, lets avoid – that’s best practice. If it’s Web Standards,

I’m reminded that this is the same person who said that JOIN was deprecated from MySQL implying with that LEFT JOIN, RIGHT JOIN and INNER JOIN. Well, he was/is totally wrong. Is he proving himself again?