This section provides a quick description of the ECMAScript Language Specification and its version history.
The ECMAScript Language Specification is developed and maintained by
ECMA (European Computer Manufacturers Association).
It defines a scripting language standard
based on several originating technologies, the most well known being JavaScript (Netscape)
and JScript (Microsoft).
ECMAScript edition history:
1997 ECMA-262 Edition 1 - First edition
1998 ECMA-262 Edition 2 - Editorial changes only
1999 ECMA-262 Edition 3 - Added many new features
? ECMA-262 Edition 4 - Working in progress
ECMA current definition of ECMAScript:
ECMAScript is an object-oriented programming language for performing computations and manipulating
computational objects within a host environment.
One very important note on the ECMAScript specification is that
it does not provide any facilities to interact with the host environment.
In another word, a pure ECMAScript code written only with rules and objects described with the specification
can only perform computations and manipulate objects in memory.
It will not able to exchange data with the host environment.
In order to exchange data with the host environment,
each dialect of ECMAScript must extend the specification to add new facilities to interact with the host environment.
For example, The JavaScript dialect of ECMAScript designed for the FireFox browser host environment adds the "document"
object and its properties and methods, providing access to the browser's current document.
Another example, The JScript dialect of ECMAScript designed for the Internet Information Server (IIS) Web server host
environment adds the "request" object and its properties and methods, providing access to the server's current HTTP request.
