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MS, Mozilla Clashing Over JavaScript Update

Posted by Zonk on from the minor-frustration-of-the-titans dept.

jfruhlinger writes "JavaScript has become a crucial part of Websites built on AJAX underpinnings, which makes the upcoming revision to the ECMAScript standard crucial for the future of the Web. But in today's browser environment, no one vendor can impose an update path — which may set things up for a nasty conflict. A fight is being fought on blogs between Mozilla Chief Technology Officer (and creator of JavaScript) Brendan Eich, who wants to the new ECMAScript standard to be a radical upgrade, and Chris Wilson, architect of MS's IE team, who would rather keep JavaScript as is and put new functionality into a brand-new language."

4 of 521 comments (clear)

  1. About Silverlight? by Kelson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Opera's Haarvard suggests that it's about Silverlight, and Microsoft trying to close the web. Mozilla, Opera and others are pushing to extend open web technologies, but Microsoft is saying, wait, the web doesn't need to be extended at all! Well, except with Silverlight and WPF...

    1. Re:About Silverlight? by Wylfing · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Microsoft is saying, wait, the web doesn't need to be extended at all! Well, except with Silverlight and WPF

      Those are actually Brendan Eich's words. The extended commentary from which that comes is over here.

      MS do indeed want to close the internet, and the name of the game is "patent encumberance." It's going to be too hard to lock up JavaScript, so they don't want to play with that anymore. They need to have everyone investing in a new MS-proprietary, patent-encumbered language.

      --
      Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
  2. Re:Not sure about this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And that is exactly what ECMA 4 does: it leaves ECMA 3 as it is (except for a few really minor and obviously broken things that everyone except for Microsoft agrees on), and then adds some sorely needed extras on top of it which the open web really needs in order to stay competitive with the closed-offerings by the likes of Microsoft.
    All current-day JavaScript will continue to work! Backward compatibility has been the number one goal during the development of ECMAScript 4. But Microsoft is scared - web applications have finally started fulfilling the original promise shown by Netscape, making the OS largely irrelevant. And so Microsoft is throwing up any- and all roadblocks it can think of, stalling for as much time as possible in order to create enough lock-in with WPF e.a. that they'll remain relevant. Understandable, of course - they're a company, trying to survive. But a really bad thing for the open web, and something which must be overcome.

  3. STOP OVERSTATING MICROSOFT'S CONTRIBUTION by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    but if Microsoft had known that they'd be enabling a general-purpose platform for application delivery -- one that doesn't require Win32, or even a full desktop computer at all -- they'd have found another way or not done it at all

    Firstly, at the time there were a huge range of "safe-for-scripting" ActiveX objects that could be created in IE. This was Microsoft's way of clutching every corporate shop that dared to use one in a death grip, instantly destroying their potential to have the versatility that a web application would normally bring. XmlHttp, found in the MSXML library, was just another safe-for-scripting object. At the time the web curious were already exploring a number of ways to do asynchronous calls, most commonly being hidden IFRAME updates, but there were a myriad of other options, including plenty of third-party XmlHttp type components, and even some Java Applet techniques for doing this.

    This was a hugely growing need, and while Netscape was beaten to the ground and slowly regrouping Microsoft seemed to lead by default.

    The point, I suppose, is that the invention of "AJAX" was absolutely, positively inevitable. Microsoft's influence in those early days is entirely the result of its monopoly, not its technical leadership.