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> which Java engine you wanted your browser to use and Microsoft Java (or whatever it was called) It was called JScript. It was released after JavaScript. I a

> which Java engine you wanted your browser to use and Microsoft Java (or whatever it was called) It was called JScript. It was released after JavaScript. I am a peaceful man; never been in a fight with anybody, and oppose the death penalty. The exception is that I think all the people responsible for this clusterfuck of names should be shot.

un_ess 4y ago
jscript was JavaScript engine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JScript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JScript J++ was a 'clone' of Java https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B . Sun sued Microsoft, https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/sun-microsoft-settle-java-suit/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/sun-microsoft-settle... and that's how .Net was born ( with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J_Sharp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J_Sharp to ensure transition)
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  Welp, it seems I misremembered how it all fitted together. It was a stressful time to be a non-MS user back then, so I blame Post-Microsoft-Stress-Disorder.
  - sunshinerag 4y ago
    Kowlting gonya gut
hnlmorg 4y ago
JScript / JavaScript is a different language entirely from Java but another good example of how Microsoft tried to control the market.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  TBF, when JScript was born, JavaScript wasn't public nor free, it was Netscape's Javascript came out in 1995, JScript in 1996, the ECMAScript standardization began in 1997 and the first release is from 1998 They reverse engineered the language and named it differently because they had no rights over JavaScript at the time And good lord they did it, they could have adopted another language as the default one (they had VBScript too) and the story of the front end programming could have been very different. Even MS is not evil all the time
  - hnlmorg 4y ago
    > They reverse engineered the language and named it differently because they had no rights over JavaScript at the time The story I heard was that it was the Java trademark that was a bigger problem for Microsft naming it JavaScript. But that's somewhat irrelevant as you're right about the more important point about how JScript was reverse engineered from JavaScript. > Even MS is not evil all the time There was a lot of differences Microsoft introduced in JScript and as you said, Netscape submitted Javascript to ECMA for standardisation only a year later yet MS still pushed ahead with IE-specific language features to lock people into IE. This was a common stunt Microsoft pulled back in those days. Microsoft even had a term for it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      > yet MS still pushed ahead with IE-specific language features Yeah, they all did though. I was doing frontend dev back then, if we can call it that, it was web development with some JS actually or DHTML for those who remember. Scripting elements was very limited at the beginning, you couldn't access the entire DOM, only forms and images, if I remember correctly, and maybe the decoration of links, that's how the hover behaviour was born. The story is quite more nuanced, there's also the fact that IE was actually a better browser than Netscape after the Netscape 4 fiasco (I was a paying customer of Netscape 3 gold and Netscape 4) Netscape tried the non-standard layer element accessible through document.layers (all the layout was done with tables back then, so this looked like an improvement) but didn't catch up. IE 4 had a lot more features, it introduced document.all to access the entire DOM by ID, documents.forms, document.images, document.all.tags() that allowed the access to all tags by tag name, it introduced innerHTML, outerHTML, innerText and outerText properties. It's easy to understand why developers switched to IE, given also that Windows was the primary platform that users used to browse the web (do we still use the browse verb?) and IE4 was available on the Mac too. IE5 introduced the XMLHttpRequest object so AJAX was born (IE 5 on Mac was even more advanced than the one on Windows) And yes, MS abused of their dominant position with IE6, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that they actually innovated in the field, before abusing of it. EDIT: it wasn't called XmlHttpRequest on IE, you had to instantiate an Activex Object (COM component) the MSXML2.XMLHttp. Forefox came up with the XmlHttpRequest name later (XML was still going strong at the time). You could actually instantiate any Activex component available on the client machine from IE >= 5, even Word if you wanted to. I remember developing intranets for Windows networks where we used Word automation from the browser using Activex. To think about it now it was a terrible idea, but it looked like a miracle back then. You could instantiate the ADODB COM component and run queries from the browser to the SQL server.
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
JScript was their version of JavaScript You could also use VBScript in the browser if you wanted to, it's been an option up to IE 11 IE had pluggable scripting engines, which wasn't a bad idea per se and anyone could write one, it was a simple COM component
- pjmlp 4y ago
  ActiveState provided Tcl, Perl and Python versions actually.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    ActiveState, that is a name I haven't heard in a long time! They provided the best Perl distribution for Windows. They also made some cool IDE/Editor based on Mozilla XUL.
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      ActiveState's IDE (Komodo) was recently open sourced!

un_ess 4y ago

jscript was JavaScript engine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JScript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JScript J++ was a 'clone' of Java https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B . Sun sued Microsoft, https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/sun-microsoft-settle-java-suit/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/sun-microsoft-settle... and that's how .Net was born ( with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J_Sharp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J_Sharp to ensure transition)

Beltalowda 4y ago
Welp, it seems I misremembered how it all fitted together. It was a stressful time to be a non-MS user back then, so I blame Post-Microsoft-Stress-Disorder.
- sunshinerag 4y ago
  Kowlting gonya gut

hnlmorg 4y ago

JScript / JavaScript is a different language entirely from Java but another good example of how Microsoft tried to control the market.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
TBF, when JScript was born, JavaScript wasn't public nor free, it was Netscape's Javascript came out in 1995, JScript in 1996, the ECMAScript standardization began in 1997 and the first release is from 1998 They reverse engineered the language and named it differently because they had no rights over JavaScript at the time And good lord they did it, they could have adopted another language as the default one (they had VBScript too) and the story of the front end programming could have been very different. Even MS is not evil all the time
- hnlmorg 4y ago
  > They reverse engineered the language and named it differently because they had no rights over JavaScript at the time The story I heard was that it was the Java trademark that was a bigger problem for Microsft naming it JavaScript. But that's somewhat irrelevant as you're right about the more important point about how JScript was reverse engineered from JavaScript. > Even MS is not evil all the time There was a lot of differences Microsoft introduced in JScript and as you said, Netscape submitted Javascript to ECMA for standardisation only a year later yet MS still pushed ahead with IE-specific language features to lock people into IE. This was a common stunt Microsoft pulled back in those days. Microsoft even had a term for it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    > yet MS still pushed ahead with IE-specific language features Yeah, they all did though. I was doing frontend dev back then, if we can call it that, it was web development with some JS actually or DHTML for those who remember. Scripting elements was very limited at the beginning, you couldn't access the entire DOM, only forms and images, if I remember correctly, and maybe the decoration of links, that's how the hover behaviour was born. The story is quite more nuanced, there's also the fact that IE was actually a better browser than Netscape after the Netscape 4 fiasco (I was a paying customer of Netscape 3 gold and Netscape 4) Netscape tried the non-standard layer element accessible through document.layers (all the layout was done with tables back then, so this looked like an improvement) but didn't catch up. IE 4 had a lot more features, it introduced document.all to access the entire DOM by ID, documents.forms, document.images, document.all.tags() that allowed the access to all tags by tag name, it introduced innerHTML, outerHTML, innerText and outerText properties. It's easy to understand why developers switched to IE, given also that Windows was the primary platform that users used to browse the web (do we still use the browse verb?) and IE4 was available on the Mac too. IE5 introduced the XMLHttpRequest object so AJAX was born (IE 5 on Mac was even more advanced than the one on Windows) And yes, MS abused of their dominant position with IE6, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that they actually innovated in the field, before abusing of it. EDIT: it wasn't called XmlHttpRequest on IE, you had to instantiate an Activex Object (COM component) the MSXML2.XMLHttp. Forefox came up with the XmlHttpRequest name later (XML was still going strong at the time). You could actually instantiate any Activex component available on the client machine from IE >= 5, even Word if you wanted to. I remember developing intranets for Windows networks where we used Word automation from the browser using Activex. To think about it now it was a terrible idea, but it looked like a miracle back then. You could instantiate the ADODB COM component and run queries from the browser to the SQL server.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

JScript was their version of JavaScript You could also use VBScript in the browser if you wanted to, it's been an option up to IE 11 IE had pluggable scripting engines, which wasn't a bad idea per se and anyone could write one, it was a simple COM component

pjmlp 4y ago
ActiveState provided Tcl, Perl and Python versions actually.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  ActiveState, that is a name I haven't heard in a long time! They provided the best Perl distribution for Windows. They also made some cool IDE/Editor based on Mozilla XUL.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    ActiveState's IDE (Komodo) was recently open sourced!