Brief History
This ECMA Standard is based on several originating technologies, the most well known being JavaScript (Netscape)
and JScript (Microsoft). The language was invented by Brendan Eich at Netscape and first appeared in that
company’s Navigator 2.0 browser. It has appeared in all subsequent browsers from Netscape and in all browsers from
Microsoft starting with Internet Explorer 3.0.
The development of this Standard started in November 1996. The first edition of this ECMA Standard was adopted by
the ECMA General Assembly of June 1997.
That ECMA Standard was submitted to ISO/IEC JTC 1 for adoption under the fast-track procedure, and approved as
international standard ISO/IEC 16262, in April 1998. The ECMA General Assembly of June 1998 approved the
second edition of ECMA-262 to keep it fully aligned with ISO/IEC 16262. Changes between the first and the second
edition are editorial in nature.
The current document defines the third edition of the Standard and includes powerful regular expressions, better
string handling, new control statements, try/catch exception handling, tighter definition of errors, formatting for
numeric output and minor changes in anticipation of forthcoming internationalisation facilities and future language
growth.
Work on the language is not complete. The technical committee is working on significant enhancements, including
mechanisms for scripts to be created and used across the Internet, and tighter coordination with other standards bodies
such as groups within the World Wide Web Consortium and the Wireless Application Protocol Forum.
This Standard has been adopted as 3rd Edition of ECMA-262 by the ECMA General Assembly in December, 1999.
