The evolution of client-side scripting

The evolution of client-side scripting

After the completion of ECMA-262 edition 3, significant work was done to develop edition 4. However, ECMAScript's technical committee was split, with some members favoring ECMAScript 4 and others advocating ECMAScript 3.1, which is more modest in both semantic and syntactic innovation. After the 'Oslo meeting' in July 2008 both groups were reunited and agreed upon a new direction and roadmap:

* ECMAScript 4 was abandonded, due to political differences concerning language complexity. Because currently only ActionScript 3 is based on ECMAScript 4, the impact of this decision is that ActionScript will no longer be compliant with new versions of ECMAScript.
* ECMAScript 5 (previously: ECMAScript 3.1) was published as a final draft, planned to become a specification in December 2009.
* ECMAScript Harmony (likely to be renamed to ECMAScript 6) will be the next-generation version of ECMAScript.