"Nick Arnett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >The short version is that in the early days of Netscape, which probably was >still called Mosaic Communications,
I'd put it on the other side of the name change, but it was within a few months. IIRC, MCC became Netscape CC at around v0.9 something. Remember the throbbing blue N? If I recall correctly, Java didn't come into the picture until the ramping up for 2.0. I joined a Java startup in Dec '95 when all this was mission critical stuff and Sun's HotJava was the only browser to support Java, at the time I was upgrading browsers on a daily basis. Not that it means I remember the details. :) >they cut a marketing alliance with Sun, >focused on Java. Somebody in management, without really communicating with >engineering, thought that it would be really good to have a scripting >language that would interoperate with Java, sort of a Java-lite. While working on 2.0, the Netscape crew had already created a language called LiveScript to allow integration between plugins and the browser (and, if IIRC, back-end services like the Merchant Server). When Sun and Netscape started talking about putting Java in Netscape Navigator, that's when the marketing types decided on the JavaScript name. Some of the syntax nuances are distinctly Java-like, and you can use JavaScript to integrate the browser, plugins, and applets, so it's not a completely misnamed language, but it's certainly caused oodles of confusion and tarnished both languages. I found a bit of a write-up on this: http://webreference.com/content/jssource/chap1.html Not as detailed as Nick's "in the trenches" recollections, though. :) > Last time I was paying attention, they were still warning >people that someday Javascript would have to be redesigned from the ground >up because it got off to such a bad start. I don't think that day ever >came. For a hacked together language, it's not all that bad. All you really want to do in {Java,J,ECMA}Script is get objects implemented as black boxes to talk together - usually some bit of browser with some other bit of browser, or occasionally a plug-in of some variety, and along the way you may want to do a little math of handle some events. It's not rocket science, so the language shouldn't make you learn rocket science. Languages like Perl (which I use all the time) are a little too obtuse for beginners; JavaScript is pretty darn good for quick prototyping. Joshua _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
