javascript - What is ECMAScript?

Question

In Visual Studio when I am setting my script type to JavaScript this comes up as an option in intellisense.

A quick Google search came up with lame results, leading me to believe this isn't terribly popular to use.

• What is it?
• Does anyone use it? (<script type="text/ecmascript">)
• Why?

Answer 1

JavaScript is a subset of ECMAScript. JavaScript is basically ECMAScript at its core but builds upon it. Languages such as ActionScript, JavaScript, JScript all use ECMAScript as its core. As a comparison, AS/JS/JScript are 3 different cars, but they all use the same engine... each of their exteriors is different though, and there have been several modifications done to each to make it unique.

The history is, Brendan Eich created Mocha which became LiveScript, and later JavaScript. Netscape presented JavaScript to Ecma International, which develops standards and it was renamed to ECMA-262 aka ECMAScript.

It's important to note that Brendan Eich's "JavaScript" is not the same JavaScript that is a dialect of ECMAScript. He built the core language which was renamed to ECMAScript, which differs from the JavaScript which browser-vendors implement nowadays.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript