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I Choo-Choo Choose The Web: A History of the Web and JavaScript 1945-2012

I Choo-Choo Choose The Web: A History of the Web and JavaScript 1945-2012

I gave this as a keynote at the first ScotlandJS. Skip 22 slides in to begin the history walkthrough from 1945, the first group of slides are intro and only work with the talk.

Peter Cooper

June 26, 2012
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Transcript

  1. View Slide

  2. Things to avoid in a keynote
    Meta-talk about the keynote itself
    Antagonizing the audience
    Anything “sexy”
    Hitler / contentious world history
    Racing through too many slides & topics
    Running over time ?

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  3. Why me?

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  4. View Slide

  5. javascriptweekly.com

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  6. 1996

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  7. 1996

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  8. 1996

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  9. 1996

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  10. 1996

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  11. The Web’s history is
    JavaScript’s history

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  12. The Internet’s history is
    JavaScript’s history

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  13. Commodore VIC-20

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  14. BBC Micro

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  15. View Slide

  16. My pivotal GCSE “options” choice..

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  17. View Slide

  18. View Slide

  19. View Slide

  20. View Slide

  21. So.. the Web.

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  22. Vannevar Bush
    1945

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  23. View Slide

  24. View Slide

  25. 1961
    Brendan Eich is invented born
    CC licensed - Gen Kenai - http://www.flickr.com/photos/gen/4774151517/

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  26. 1965
    “Hypertext” coined by
    Ted Nelson

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  27. 1965
    Douglas Engelbart develops and
    demonstrates NLS
    - the “oN-Line System”

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  28. View Slide

  29. 1965
    ARPANET

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  30. 1975
    Two network comms test
    Stanford - UCL

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  31. 1982
    Paul Irish is born!
    CC licensed - Ben Alman- http://www.flickr.com/photos/rj3/3919895524/

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  32. 1983
    ARPANET moves to TCP/IP
    The “Internet” is born

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  33. 1983-1984
    DNS is invented and deployed

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  34. January 1, 1985
    Generic top level domains born
    com, org, net, edu, gov, mil, arpa

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  35. March 15, 1985
    symbolics.com

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  36. 1990
    Tim Berners-Lee creates
    WorldWideWeb at CERN

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  37. August 1991
    The Web becomes
    publicly available!

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  38. October 1991
    First document showing off all
    HTML tags at the time (18!)
    http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/Tags.html
    Including oddities like and

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  39. 1992
    ViolaWWW browser released

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  40. View Slide

  41. 1992
    First Web server outside of Europe

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  42. March
    1993
    NCSA releases
    alpha of Mosaic
    for X Windows

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  43. Marc Andreessen

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  44. 1993
    CERN agrees to let anyone use Web
    protocols and code royalty-free

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  45. June 1993
    HTML published as an
    “Internet Draft” by the IETF

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  46. October 1994
    W3C founded

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  47. October 1994
    Eolas founded
    Patented plugins for browsers

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  48. "Distributed hypermedia method
    for automatically invoking external
    application providing interaction
    and display of embedded objects
    within a hypermedia document"

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  49. October
    December
    1994
    Netscape Navigator

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  50. December
    1994
    Netscape
    NetSite
    Web Server

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  51. 1994
    HoTMetaL
    HTML Editor

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  52. May 1995
    Netscape licenses Java
    to run “applets” in the browser

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  53. May 1995
    Brendan Eich gets 10 days to
    build a programming language
    for Netscape Navigator

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  54. Language requirements
    Must let developers interact with Java
    Must be simple (Visual Basic-like)
    Can it look like Java, please?
    Oh, and get it done quick.

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  55. What we got
    Object oriented scripting language
    Prototypal inheritance (a la Self)
    Java/C family-esque syntax
    Dynamic, and loosely typed
    First class functions (hello Scheme!)

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  56. http://www.crockford.com/javascript/little.html

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  57. Self + Scheme + Java
    =
    Mocha

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  58. Self + Scheme + Java
    =
    LiveScript!
    (a gross simplification! - see Douglas Crockford’s fine videos for
    more on this story)

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  59. June 1995
    Netscape and Macromedia
    partner to run “Director” movies
    direct in the browser

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  60. September
    1995
    Netscape Navigator 2
    Now with..
    FRAMES!
    LiveScript!
    DOM!

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  61. View Slide

  62. View Slide

  63. View Slide

  64. November 1995
    HTML 2.0 spec published
    by IETF

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  65. Announcement of JavaScript
    by Netscape and Sun
    December 1995

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  66. NETSCAPE AND SUN ANNOUNCE JAVASCRIPT,
    THE OPEN, CROSS-PLATFORM OBJECT
    SCRIPTING LANGUAGE FOR ENTERPRISE
    NETWORKS AND THE INTERNET
    28 INDUSTRY-LEADING COMPANIES TO ENDORSE
    JAVASCRIPT AS A COMPLEMENT TO JAVA FOR EASY
    ONLINE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

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  67. 1995
    Internet Explorer 1

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  68. early
    1996
    IIS 1.0
    Internet
    Information
    Services

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  69. Microsoft’s first Web server was
    invented in Scotland!
    but it wasn’t fast enough for MS so IIS was developed instead..

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  70. March
    1996
    Netscape
    Enterprise
    Server

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  71. "Netscape Enterprise Server is the first
    Web server to support the Java and
    JavaScript programming languages,
    enabling the creation, delivery and
    management of live online applications."
    from just $995!

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  72. Your request came from:
    write(request.ip);

    Server-side JavaScript (1996 style)

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  73. Your request came from:
    `write(request.ip)`

    Server-side JavaScript (1996 style)

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  74. write ("var<br/>luck = " + client.winnings +<br/>"")
    Server-side JavaScript (1996 style)
    var luck = 123

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  75. September
    1995
    Internet Explorer 3
    ActiveX
    PICS
    DOM
    CSS

    JScript
    VBScript

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  76. Internet Explorer 3
    PICS
    Platform for
    Internet
    Content
    Selection

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  77. Internet Explorer 3
    DOM
    document.formName.inputName
    document.forms[0].elements[0]
    Client-side form validation
    “Rollover” effects..
    “DOM Level 0” or “Legacy DOM”

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  78. Internet Explorer 3
    CSS
    http://www.microsoft.com/typography/css/gallery/entrance.htm

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  79. Internet Explorer 3
    VBScript

    Simple Validation
    <br/><!--<br/>Sub Submit_OnClick<br/>If IsNumeric(Document.myForm.Foo1.Value) Then<br/>If Document.myForm.Foo1.Value < 100 Or Document.myForm.Foo1.Value > 1000<br/>MsgBox "Please enter a number between 100 and 1000."<br/>Else<br/>MsgBox "Your Number Has Been Accepted!"<br/>End If<br/>Else<br/>MsgBox "Please enter a number."<br/>End If<br/>End Sub<br/>--><br/>


    Enter a value between 10 and 1000:




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  80. September
    1995
    Netscape Navigator 3

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  81. Netscape Navigator 3

    Loading remote JavaScript!

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  82. Netscape Navigator 3
    <br/>JavaScript Style Sheets (JSSS)<br/>

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  83. Netscape Navigator 3
    <br/>document.tags.H1.color = “blue”<br/>classes.ruddy.all.color = “#FF0000”<br/>
    JavaScript Style Sheets (JSSS)

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  84. Netscape Navigator 3
    with(tags) {
    H1.color = “blue”;
    EM.color = “red”;
    }
    JavaScript Style Sheets (JSSS)

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  85. Netscape Navigator 3
    <br/>evaluate_style() {<br/>if (color == "red"){<br/>color = "blue";<br/>fontStyle = "italic";<br/>} else if (color == "blue"){<br/>color = "green";<br/>fontWeight = "bold";<br/>fontStyle = "normal";<br/>} else if (color == "green") {<br/>color = "red";<br/>fontStyle = "medium";<br/>}<br/>}<br/>tag.UL.color = "green";<br/>tag.UL.apply = evaluate_style();<br/>

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  86. Brendan Eich refactors and improves
    the JS engine - hello SpiderMonkey!
    Autumn/Fall 1996

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  87. December 1996
    CSS 1 becomes official
    W3C Recommendation
    has margins, padding, font control, background, alignment, etc.

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  88. 1996
    Macromedia Flash

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  89. View Slide

  90. David Flanagan’s
    landmark
    JavaScript book
    is published by
    O’Reilly
    1996

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  91. First moves on standardizing
    JavaScript with ECMA
    1996-1997

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  92. ECMAScript
    ECMA-262
    Technical Committee 39 (TC39)
    ECMAScript.next
    Harmony
    Buzzword
    Bingo!

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  93. January 1997
    HTML 3.2 spec published by W3C

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  94. Works begins on “Javagator” (later known
    as Rhino), a Java based JS engine
    1997

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  95. 1997
    Internet Explorer 4
    Channels!
    Active Desktop!
    DHTML!

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  96. DHTML
    Dynamic HTML
    HTML + CSS + JavaScript

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  97. Games
    Animate text and images
    Tickers / dynamic marquees
    Custom scrolling & UI elements
    First in browser “editors”

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  98. View Slide

  99. Cross browser standards were a
    problem..
    .. until DOM support was standardized

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  100. 1997
    Netscape Navigator 4

    CSS1 support
    Dynamic fonts

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  101. December 1997
    HTML 4.0 spec published
    as a W3C Recommendation

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  102. December
    1997
    Macromedia Dreamweaver

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  103. <br/><!--<br/>function MM_preloadImages() { //v3.0<br/>var d=document; if(d.images){ if(!d.MM_p) d.MM_p=new Array();<br/>var i,j=d.MM_p.length,a=MM_preloadImages.arguments; for(i=0; i<a.length; i++)<br/>if (a[i].indexOf("#")!=0){ d.MM_p[j]=new Image; d.MM_p[j++].src=a[i];}}<br/>}<br/>function MM_swapImgRestore() { //v3.0<br/>var i,x,a=document.MM_sr; for(i=0;a&&i<a.length&&(x=a[i])&&x.oSrc;i++) x.src=x.oSrc;<br/>}<br/>function MM_findObj(n, d) { //v4.01<br/>var p,i,x; if(!d) d=document; if((p=n.indexOf("?"))>0&&parent.frames.length) {<br/>d=parent.frames[n.substring(p+1)].document; n=n.substring(0,p);}<br/>if(!(x=d[n])&&d.all) x=d.all[n]; for (i=0;!x&&i<d.forms.length;i++) x=d.forms[i][n];<br/>for(i=0;!x&&d.layers&&i<d.layers.length;i++) x=MM_findObj(n,d.layers[i].document);<br/>if(!x && d.getElementById) x=d.getElementById(n); return x;<br/>}<br/>function MM_swapImage() { //v3.0<br/>var i,j=0,x,a=MM_swapImage.arguments; document.MM_sr=new Array; for(i=0;i<(a.length-2);i+=3)<br/>if ((x=MM_findObj(a[i]))!=null){document.MM_sr[j++]=x; if(!x.oSrc) x.oSrc=x.src; x.src=a[i+2];}<br/>}<br/>//--><br/> The most widespread JS code ever?

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  104. May 1998
    CSS 2 published as a
    W3C Recommendation
    z-indexing, positions (absolute, relative, fixed), media types, text shadows

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  105. June 2011!
    CSS 2.1 (really a cleanup) didn’t
    become a W3C Recommendation till..

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  106. 1998
    W3C pushes out a DOM standard
    “DOM Level 1”

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  107. 1999
    Internet Explorer 5
    Limited DOM
    Level 1 support
    XMLHTTP ActiveX control

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  108. Microsoft’s XMLHTTP work would go on to influence
    XMLHttpRequest in other browsers and provide inspiration for
    the AJAX movement

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  109. ECMAScript 3 (ES3)
    standard released
    December 1999
    try/catch, regexes, new control statements - de facto JS base for a decade

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  110. 1999
    W3C considers HTML done
    Future is XML and XHTML 1.0!

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  111. January 2000
    XHTML 1.0 published as a
    W3C Recommendation

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  112. May 2000
    ISO HTML (based on 4.01 Strict)
    published as a standard

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  113. Macromedia Flash’s “actions”
    become ActionScript,
    a new ECMAScript dialect
    September 2000

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  114. Initially very much like JS
    ActionScript 2 and 3 (2003 & 2006) added:
    compile time type checking
    type annotations
    class based OO syntax
    packages and namespaces
    ability to access DirectX and OpenGL

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  115. Late 2000
    DOM Level 2 published
    including.. getElementById

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  116. November
    2000
    Netscape Navigator 6
    Bloatware
    A big mistake
    Included an e-mail client
    and more..

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  117. August
    2001
    Internet Explorer 6

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  118. 2002
    Mozilla Phoenix
    Lightweight
    Fast
    Only a Web browser

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  119. 2002
    Mozilla Firebird

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  120. 2004
    Mozilla Firefox

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  121. 2004
    Mozilla Firefox 1.0
    RSS, better tabs, Firefox
    logo (since 0.9), many
    localizations

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  122. 2004
    WHATWG founded
    Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group

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  123. 2004
    and starts work on HTML5
    W3C being slow.. W3C continued to focus on XHTML 2.0

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  124. April 2004
    DOM Level 3 published
    .. still the status quo

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  125. October 2004
    O’Reilly’s first “Web 2.0” Summit

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  126. View Slide

  127. Feb 2005
    “AJAX” coined
    by Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path
    Asynchronous JavaScript And XML

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  128. View Slide

  129. February 2005
    Prototype JS framework/library released
    by Sam Stephenson
    Used primarily with Rails (to start with..)

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  130. February 2005
    ajaxian
    launches

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  131. June 2005
    script.aculo.us released

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  132. 2005
    Adobe Creative Suite 2
    adds “ExtendScript”
    (an ECMAScript dialect)

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  133. 2005
    Mozilla Developer Center
    (now Mozilla Developer
    Network) Launched

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  134. January 2006
    jQuery Released

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  135. Reliable and extensible cross browser
    abstraction of many client-side JavaScript
    operations, including DOM element
    selection and manipulation, animations,
    event handling, and Ajax support.

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  136. JavaScript 1.7 comes to Firefox 2
    October 2006
    included many ideas now appearing in ES6
    (e.g. let, generators, array comprehensions)
    .. but very much a Mozilla only dealie.

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  137. 2006
    First “canvas 3D” experiments
    by a Mozilla engineer, Vladimir Vukicevic

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  138. February 2007
    Steve Yegge ponders
    “The Next Big Language”
    http://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/next-big-language.html

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  139. C-like syntax
    Dynamic typing with optional static types
    Performance
    Tools
    Kitchen sink
    Multi-platform

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  140. April 2007
    Mozilla, Apple and Opera propose
    the W3C adopt WHATWG’s work
    on HTML5
    and use the HTML5 name too

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  141. May 2007
    The W3C gets behind HTML5

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  142. 2008
    The W3C publishes a first working
    draft of an HTML5 spec

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  143. Improved markup, , , inline SVG, new
    form controls, custom data attributes..
    plus a collection of APIs..
    Canvas, Offline Web Applications, History
    manipulation, Drag and Drop, Microdata, WebStorage,
    and more..

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  144. Canvas

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  145. Be aware many “not-officially-HTML5” specs
    are wrapped up in the HTML5 “brand” now:
    Server Sent Events, WebSocket, WebGL, Web
    Audio API, Geolocation API, etc.

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  146. WebSocket

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  147. WebGL

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  148. XHTML5 is an XML serialization
    of HTML5

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  149. 2008
    PhoneGap Released
    Build native mobile apps
    using Web technologies
    a.k.a. Apache Cordova (sort of)

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  150. ECMAScript 4 fiasco
    2008
    Political differences, mostly between Adobe and Microsoft

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  151. ActionScript 3
    inherited quite a lot from ECMAScript 4

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  152. “Harmony” comes to JS
    2008

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  153. May 2008
    JavaScript: The Good Parts published

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  154. "When Java applets failed, JavaScript became
    the 'language of the Web' by default.
    JavaScript's popularity is almost completely
    independent of its qualities as a programming
    language."
    Douglas Crockford

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  155. "In JavaScript, there is a beautiful, elegant,
    highly expressive language that is buried under
    a steaming pile of good intentions and
    blunders."
    Douglas Crockford

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  156. JavaScript: The Good Parts
    Functions, loose typing, dynamic objects,
    expressive object literal notation (JSON was
    extracted from this)

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  157. JavaScript: The Bad Parts
    Global variables, scope (function not block),
    automatic semicolon insertion (ASI),
    reserved words, Unicode support, typeof,
    parseInt, +, floating point, NaN, arrays..

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  158. September
    2008
    Google Chrome
    And don’t forget the V8
    JavaScript engine..

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  159. ECMAScript 5 (ES5)
    standard released
    2009
    getters, setters, better reflection, standardized some quirks, strict mode

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  160. Strict mode is a restricted variant of JS
    with different semantics.
    Some things that didn’t cause errors now do.

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  161. “use strict”;
    Can’t create global variables.
    Can’t delete non-existing properties.
    Function argument names must be unique.
    No octal syntax for numbers.
    No “with”
    eval of strict mode code doesn’t introduce vars into outer scope
    And more, naturally..!

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  162. 2009

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  163. System overlaying Google’s V8 JavaScript engine
    Server-side JavaScript (again!)
    Ideal for building Internet services
    Non-blocking, event-driven I/O

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  164. var http = require('http');
    http.createServer(function (request, response) {
    response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
    response.end('Hello World\n');
    }).listen(8000);
    console.log('Server running at http://localhost:8000/');

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  165. 2009
    First JSConf
    130 people in 2009
    Now exist worldwide..
    Europe
    Argentina
    Australia

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  166. September 2009
    W3C starts work on CSS4
    subject selectors, :matches() pseudo-class, :local-link, more pseudo-classes

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  167. W3C starts work on CSS4
    section h1, article h1, aside h1 {
    font-size: 10em;
    }
    :matches(section, article, aside) h1 {
    font-size: 10em;
    }

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  168. September
    2009
    Google Chrome Frame
    Sends IE on a Chrome trip

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  169. A language that compiles to JavaScript.
    December 2009
    0.1.0

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  171. A nicer way to write JavaScript?
    December 2009
    Adds syntactic sugar inspired by Ruby, Python and Haskell:
    list comprehension, pattern matching (in terms of destructuring
    assignments), significant whitespace, everything is an expression,
    class sugar, existential operator, variadic parameters, default
    parameters, heredocs, automatic lexical scoping, optional
    parentheses! (And more..)

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  172. December 2010
    1.0

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  173. https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-languages-that-compile-to-JS

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  175. April 2010
    Steve Jobs lays into Flash, says HTML5 will win.

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  176. 2010
    First JS1K

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  177. 2010
    Backbone.js
    Released

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  178. 2010
    Joyent sponsors Node.js

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  179. The JS performance race is in full flow!
    Firefox 4’s JavaScript engine 4x faster than
    3.6’s due to JaegerMonkey.
    November 2010
    JIT becomes the name of the game.

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  180. JavaScript overtakes Ruby to become the
    #1 most popular language on GitHub.
    December 2010

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  181. Google’s V8 gets “Crankshaft”
    Big performance improvements
    December 2010
    Aggressive optimizations in compilation + faster start-up times

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  182. 2011
    Chrome 9 and Firefox 4 bring
    WebGL support to the masses

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  183. March 2011
    WebGL 1.0 spec finalized

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  184. April
    2011
    Internet Explorer 10
    Platform Preview
    Still no WebGL
    Much better CSS3 and HTML5 support
    Hardware accelerated Canvas
    Big JS performance improvements

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  185. April
    2011
    Emscripten
    LLVM to JavaScript compiler by Alon Zakai (Mozilla)
    A way to compile C/C++ to JavaScript

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  186. May
    2011
    JSLinux

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  187. ES 5.1 Spec Ratified
    July 2011

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  188. pdf.js’ pixel perfect rendering milestone
    July 2011

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  189. 2011
    Google Dart

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  190. Goal is to "ultimately replace JavaScript as
    the lingua franca of Web development on
    the open Web platform"

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  191. Aims to solve JavaScript’s “problems”,
    be better for large projects, better
    security, etc.

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  192. Class based, single inheritance, object
    oriented, C-like syntax.. a bit more Java-
    like in some ways.
    Optional typing, compiles to JS as
    CoffeeScript does (for now) but
    Chromium has a special Dart VM build.

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  193. November 2011
    Adobe announces discontinuation
    of Flash for mobile
    - will focus on HTML5

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  194. November 2011
    jQuery Mobile 1.0 Released

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  195. ECMAScript.next under heavy development
    a.k.a. ES6
    2012

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  196. Goals
    Be a better language for complex apps
    (and library shared by those apps)
    Good target for code generators
    Accept de facto standards where possible
    (vs inventing stuff)

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  197. New goodies
    let, const, function in block scope
    destructuring assignments ( let {a, b} = pt; }
    parameter default values ( function f(x, y = 10) { } )
    rest, variadic parameters .. ( function(i, ...a) { } )
    proxies, weak maps
    iterators, generators
    comprehensions ( return [a + b for (a in A) for (b in B)] )
    arrow function syntax
    and more, naturally..

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  198. npm registry hits 10,000 packages
    May 2012

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  199. CoffeeScript enters GitHub’s top 10 most
    popular programming languages
    May 2012

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  200. O’Reilly’s first
    JavaScript
    conference
    Fluent
    (about time!)
    May 2012

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  201. May 2012
    First BackboneConf

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  202. Target for the release of the ES6 standard
    December 2013

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  203. 2014
    Target for HTML5 to get
    W3C Recommendation status

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  204. View Slide