Next Generation HTML: Scripting Efforts
June 7th 1998
Last Modified:
August 11, 2008
In our diagram, scripting efforts appear below the markup
languages.
Netscape first introduced scripting of Web pages with
JavaScript 1.0in Netscape Navigator 2.0 beta (Fall, 1995).
Actually,
JavaScript
was originally called "LiveScript" until someone at
Netscape decided it would be beneficial to capitalize on the
current
Java
wave, so the name was changed. At the time, Java and JavaScript
were completely unrelated
[footnote].
Now, however, well defined interfaces exist between the two
separate languages.
Microsoft introduced a derivative of JavaScript, called JScript
soon thereafter in Internet Explorer 3.0 beta (Spring, 1996).
To makes matters even more confusing, Internet Explorer also
supports JavaScript -- with some exceptions.
Underlying both JavaScript and JScript is the notion of an
object model, with an
object hierarchy rooted by a window object, with children
named document, location, history, and frame. (The JScript model
details differ.) Each object has properties, the values of which
can be accessed with the general syntax:
objectName.propertyName
ECMAScript
(Standard ECMA-262) is the evolving effort to create a general
purpose, cross-platform programming language. ECMAScript is technology
based largely upon Netscape's JavaScript and Microsoft's JScript.
According to the
Document Object Model
Level 1 Specification from the W3 (with participation from Netscape,
Microsoft, JavaSoft, IBM, SoftQuad, Novell, ArborText, Inso and
others), the Document Object Model (DOM) is:
....a platform- and language-neutral interface that will allow programs and
scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure and style
of documents. The Document Object Model provides a standard set of objects
for representing HTML and XML documents, a standard model of how these
objects
can be combined, and a standard interface for accessing and manipulating
them.
Vendors can support the DOM as an interface to their proprietary data
structures
and APIs, and content authors can write to the standard DOM interfaces
rather
than product-specific APIs, thus increasing interoperability on the Web. The
goal of the DOM specification is to define a programmatic interface for XML
and HTML. The DOM specification is separated into three parts: Core, HTML,
and XML....
Dynamic HTML is a term
introduced by
Netscape and
Microsoft,
but not used by W3C. The
Consortium's position
is that DHTML is nothing more than "the combination of HTML,
style sheets and scripts that allows documents to be animated".
ECMAScript and DOM are efforts to arrive at vendor neutral scripting
solutions.
As Java FAQ maintainer Elliotte Rusty
Harold wrote in
The Java Developer's Resource, "Java and JavaScript
are about as closely related as the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic
City is to the Taj Mahal in India. In other words
Java and JavaScript both have the word Java in their names."
Next Generation HTML: Markup Languages
Next Generation HTML: The Big Picture
Next Generation HTML: Style Sheets
|
