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Filed under Architecture on July 10, 2006 by

Javascript : The Second Coming

It seems like there's always been an anti-JavaScript feeling amongst people, and now with all the hype around Flex (and it's JavaScript wanna-be sibling ActionScript), it seems like the rift is getting bigger. As an interpreted language, it was always frowned upon. The fact that it wasn't compiled into tiny ones and zeros made it a second class language. Some even went as far a saying it wasn't a programming language, but solely a programming script.

I'm Joel Nagy, a lead developer at Arc90, the creator of Sidenotes and a JavaScript zealot. In the Web 2.0 world, JavaScript seems to have found a reawakening. I'm extremely joyous that this new movement has come to pass.

I've been programming in JavaScript for about a decade now and it's one of my favorite languages. The simplicity of it is great, including the loose typing and its powerful connection with both HTML and XML. Surprisingly, after a few dormant years, XMLHTTP Requesting broke down the barriers which held the web in a page paradigm. Moving forward, the idea of Web 2.0 (despite all it's silliness sometimes) will bring forth many ideas and approaches to web development that were never imagined.

JavaScript evolved from a simple language which was used to manipulate form data to a tool that recreates web pages into web applications with the flair of Flash and the prowess of any desktop application. The developers at Arc90 plan to launch some cool tools built with JavaScript. There are many ways to reach the ends we create but JavaScript allows those ends to be reached in a simple way. It will let non-programmers enjoy the bounty of our creations.

JavaScript is finally getting the recognition it truly deserves. I'm fairly sure that without JavaScript, ActionScript would never have become as important to Flash and Flex. Yahoo! Widgets utilizes JavaScript to allow users to interact with their computers and the web. XUL, the foundation of Firefox, runs on JavaScript.

Perhaps one of the greatest things to come out of Web 2.0, and to a true extent before Web 2.0, is the JavaScript API. It's amazing how many are available. Yahoo!, Google and many others have finally stepped into this world and released APIs and toolsets in JavaScript. Granted that many of the APIs and toolsets are bloated and overly complicated, JavaScript is definitely progressing towards a more useful end.

In the future, I'll be blogging about some of the cool JavaScript-powered tools that we'll be releasing in the Lab as well as commenting more broadly about other ideas, tricks and trends around Javascript. Stay tuned!

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Comments

Hi,

You describe ActionScript at JavaScript's "wannabe sibling".

Just some context: ActionScript and JavaScript are both based on the same standard, ECMAScript. Neither is a wannabe, just different implementations of the same standard. JavaScript is a trademark of Sun and ActionScript is a trademark of Adobe. We'd just as soon use the same trademark so people realized it was the same language, but not so easy to license from Sun, and the phrase "ECMAScript" hasn't really caught on.

AS3 now is a newer version of the standard that is expected to be ratified next year. JavaScript (at least Mozilla variation) is expected to catch up with this chances and implement that new standard next year as well.

Regards,
David
Adobe

Posted on July 16, 2006 10:59 PM by David Mendels

David, I only meant "wanna-be sibling" in jest. Arc90 is certainly a strong supporter of ActionScript and Flex. I'm just excited about the new following that is finally coming back to JavaScript. With the current Beta release of Firefox 2.0 and it's addition of JavaScript 1.7 it will be making larger strides in the direction of a better language; granted AS3 has certainly made better improvements in some areas such as full support of e4x.

Posted on July 17, 2006 12:02 PM by Joel Nagy

I'd suggest stripping HTML tags for the title. See the "script" title for what I'm talking about.

Posted on July 26, 2006 6:10 PM by Tristan

Great article! I'm a newbie to JavaScript can you suggest any helpful resources.

Posted on August 3, 2006 1:09 PM by Kerwyn

Kerwyn:

I hope you enjoy coding with JavaScript, it can be tough at times with all the various browsers, but I think it's a great language and you can create some rewarding things. Here are a few sites to help you out:

www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp
developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Core_JavaScript_1.5_Reference
www.quirksmode.org/js/contents.html

Posted on August 3, 2006 5:58 PM by Joel Nagy

It's just too bad we're relegated to having to deploy applications to run in the browser environment. When are the browsers going to evolve to support better apps? The Web was designed for static pages of information, and still reflects that (where else did the idea of navigation come from?).
JavaScript (i.e. ECMAScript) has some cool features, but has way too many weird "warts" and gotchas, never mind all the quirks of the environments that host it.
I chuckle when people mention these cool new ideas that are coming about in Web 2.0, when in reality all these things (and more) existed in desktop apps many years ago. I got started in 1978 and can remember a time (before the GUI) when computers were simple and I could actually write something useful (and usable) in a day - that also didn't require half a gigabyte of RAM and a bloated operating system just to run. And nobody had to see my source code if I didn't want them to!
Ah, well, this is progress I guess.

Posted on August 22, 2007 6:10 PM by Bill

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