JavaScript
LiveScript

    (Formerly "LiveScript") Netscape's simple,
   cross-platform, World-Wide Web scripting language, only
   very vaguely related to Java (which is a Sun trademark).
   JavaScript is intimately tied to the World-Wide Web, and
   currently runs in only three environments - as a server-side
   scripting language, as an embedded language in
   server-parsed HTML, and as an embedded language run in web
   browsers where it is the most important part of DHTML.

   JavaScript has a simplified C-like syntax and is tightly
   integrated with the browser Document Object Model.  It is
   useful for implementing enhanced forms, simple web
   database front-ends, and navigation enhancements.  It is
   unusual in that the scope of variables extends throughout
   the function in which they are declared rather than the
   smallest enclosing block as in C.

   JavaScript originated from Netscape and, for a time, only
   their products supported it.  Microsoft now supports a
   work-alike which they call JScript.  The resulting
   inconsistencies make it difficult to write JavaScript that
   behaves the same in all browsers.  This could be attributed to
   the slow progress of JavaScript through the standards bodies.

   JavaScript runs "100x" slower than C, as it is purely
   interpreted (Java runs "10x" slower than C code).
   Netscape and allies say JavaScript is an "open standard" in
   an effort to keep Microsoft from monopolising web software
   as they have desktop software.  Netscape and Sun have
   co-operated to enable Java and JavaScript to exchange
   messages and data.

   See also VBScript.

   Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.lang.javascript.

   Mailing List:  ("subscribe javascript"
   in body).

   (2003-04-28)