Showing posts with label Java Script. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Java Script. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Features Of Java Script

Imperative and structured
JavaScript supports all the structured programming syntax in C (e.g., if statements, while loops, switch statements, etc.). One partial exception is scoping: C-style block-level scoping is not supported (instead, JavaScript has function-level scoping). JavaScript 1.7, however, supports block-level scoping with the let keyword. Like C, JavaScript makes a distinction between expressions and statements. One syntactic difference from C is automatic semicolon insertion, in which the semicolons that terminate statements can be omitted.

Dynamic
dynamic typing
As in most scripting languages, types are associated with values, not with variables. For example, a variable x could be bound to a number, then later rebound to a string. JavaScript supports various ways to test the type of an object, including duck typing.

object based
JavaScript is almost entirely object-based. JavaScript objects are associative arrays, augmented with prototypes (see below). Object property names are string keys: obj.x = 10 and obj["x"] = 10 are equivalent, the dot notation being syntactic sugar. Properties and their values can be added, changed, or deleted at run-time. Most properties of an object (and those on its prototype inheritance chain) can be enumerated using a for...in loop. JavaScript has a small number of built-in objects such as Function and Date.

run-time evaluation
JavaScript includes an eval function that can execute statements provided as strings at run-time.

Functional
first-class functions
Functions are first-class; they are objects themselves. As such, they have properties and methods, such as length and call(); and they can be assigned to variables, passed as arguments, returned by other functions, and manipulated like any other object. Any reference to a function allows it to be invoked using the () operator.

nested functions
'Inner' or 'nested' functions are functions defined within another function. They are created each time the outer function is invoked. In addition to that, the scope of the outer function, including any constants, local variables and argument values, become part of the internal state of each inner function object, even after execution of the outer function concludes.

closures
JavaScript allows nested functions to be created, with the lexical scope in force at their definition, and has a () operator to invoke them now or later. This combination of code that can be executed outside the scope in which it is defined, with its own scope to use during that execution, is called a closure in computer science.

Prototype-based
prototypes
JavaScript uses prototypes instead of classes for inheritance. It is possible to simulate many class-based features with prototypes in JavaScript.

functions as object constructors
Functions double as object constructors along with their typical role. Prefixing a function call with new creates a new object and calls that function with its local this keyword bound to that object for that invocation. The constructor's prototype property determines the object used for the new object's internal prototype. JavaScript's built-in constructors, such as Array, also have prototypes that can be modified.

functions as methods
Unlike many object-oriented languages, there is no distinction between a function definition and a method definition. Rather, the distinction occurs during function calling; a function can be called as a method. When a function is called as a method of an object, the function's local this keyword is bound to that object for that invocation.

What Is Java Script

JavaScript, also known as ECMAScript, is a prototype-based, object-oriented[7] scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is also considered a functional programming language like Scheme and OCaml because it has closures and supports higher-order functions.

JavaScript is an implementation of the ECMAScript language standard and is primarily used in the form of client-side JavaScript, implemented as part of a web browser in order to provide enhanced user interfaces and dynamic websites. This enables programmatic access to computational objects within a host environment.

JavaScript's use in applications outside web pages—for example in PDF-documents, site-specific browsers and desktop widgets—is also significant. Newer and faster Javascript VMs and frameworks built upon them (notably Node.js) have also increased the popularity of Javascript for server-side web apps.

JavaScript uses syntax influenced by that of C. JavaScript copies many names and naming conventions from Java, but the two languages are otherwise unrelated and have very different semantics. The key design principles within JavaScript are taken from the Self and Scheme programming languages.

JavaScript was originally developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape under the name Mocha, which was later renamed to LiveScript, and finally to JavaScript. LiveScript was the official name for the language when it first shipped in beta releases of Netscape Navigator 2.0 in September 1995, but it was renamed JavaScript in a joint announcement with Sun Microsystems on December 4, 1995 [13] when it was deployed in the Netscape browser version 2.0B3.

The change of name from LiveScript to JavaScript roughly coincided with Netscape adding support for Java technology in its Netscape Navigator web browser. The final choice of name caused confusion, giving the impression that the language was a spin-off of the Java programming language, and the choice has been characterized by many as a marketing ploy by Netscape to give JavaScript the cachet of what was then the hot new web-programming language. It has also been claimed that the language's name is the result of a co-marketing deal between Netscape and Sun, in exchange for Netscape bundling Sun's Java runtime with their then-dominant browser.

JavaScript very quickly gained widespread success as a client-side scripting language for web pages. As a consequence, Microsoft developed a partially compatible dialect of the language, naming it JScript to avoid trademark issues. JScript added new date methods to fix the Y2K-problematic methods in JavaScript, which were based on Java's java.util.Date class. was included in Internet Explorer 3.0, released in August 1996. The dialects are perceived to be so similar that the terms "JavaScript" and "JScript" are often used interchangeably. Microsoft, however, notes dozens of ways in which JScript is not ECMA-compliant.

In November, 1996 Netscape announced that it had submitted JavaScript to Ecma International for consideration as an industry standard, and subsequent work resulted in the standardized version named ECMAScript.

JavaScript has become one of the most popular programming languages on the web. Initially, however, many professional programmers denigrated the language because its target audience was web authors and other such "amateurs", among other reasons. The advent of Ajax returned JavaScript to the spotlight and brought more professional programming attention. The result was a proliferation of comprehensive frameworks and libraries, improved JavaScript programming practices, and increased usage of JavaScript outside of web browsers, as seen by the proliferation of server-side JavaScript platforms.