What is JavaScript, really?

Posted by Lord Loh. on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Lord Loh.
Published on 2012-10-22T20:11:22Z Indexed on 2012/10/22 23:17 UTC
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JavaScript

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ecmascript

All this started when I was looking for a way to test my webpage for JavaScript conformance like the W3C HTML Validator. I have not found one yet. So let me know if you know of any...

I looked for the official JavaScript page and find ECMA Script. These people have standardized a scripting language (I do not feel like calling it JavaScript anymore!) and called it ECMA-262 (Wikipedia). Their latest work is Edition 5.1
JavaScript was developed my Mozilla Corporation and their last stable version is 1.8.5 (see this) which is based on the ECMA's edition 5.1
The Wikipedia page linked mentions dialects. Mozilla's JavaScript 1.8.5 is listed as a dialect along with JScript 9 (IE) and JavaScript (Chrome's V8[Wiki]) and a lot others. Am I to understand that JavaScript 1.8.5 is a derivative of the ECMA-262 and SpiderMonkey[Wiki] is an engine that runs it? And Chrome has its own dialect and V8 engine is the program that runs it?

With all these dialects based off ECMA-262, what I can no longer understand is "What is JavaScript"? Are there any truly cross browser scripting languages? Do the various implementers come together to agree on the dialect cross compatibility? Is this effort ECMA?

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