The ECMAScript reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

ECMAScript

The ECMAScript Language Specification is a programming language specification published by the ECMA International. Development of the standard began in 1996 and was based on the popular scripting language JavaScript. It has now been accepted as ISO standard 16262.

ECMAScript defines a dynamically-typed language very loosely based on Java and other C-like languages. It supports some object-oriented features through prototype-based objects and pseudo-classes.

Most modern Web browsers include an implementation of the ECMAScript standard as well as a DOM binding for manipulating Web pages. JavaScript is implemented in Netscape Navigator, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer uses JScript. The Opera browser has its own ECMAScript interpreter with extensions to support some JavaScript and JScript features. Each browser has custom extensions to the ECMAScript standard, but any ECMAScript compliant code should work in any of the three.

See also

• JavaScript
• JScript
• ActionScript
• XML

External links

• ECMAScript Language Specification: http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.htm
• FESI - Free ECMAScript Interpreter: http://www.lugrin.ch/fesi/index.html