Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

web.archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 476 posts

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#201

Post by duxup »

commandlinefan wrote: post #165
nonesuchluck wrote: post #139

Not being on the web until the late 90s, the part I've never figured out is, what could you actually _do_ with JavaScript in the initial versions? The way I understand it, early JavaScript could only address HTML forms, links, and images. Can't modify HTML tags. Can't insert new elements. Can't update the page and re-render until DHTML in the version 4 browsers. Can't query the network until XHR. Ok, so now what? Do…

One of the big things back then was form validation. Web pages in the late 90's were necessarily very form driven (no AJAX back then), and users were frustrated to submit a form, wait for a response, only to be told that they were missing a required input (or as you suggest, 4 digits for zip code). So there were complex frameworks to let Javascript validate the form before it was submitted - the Struts framework woul…

Yeah wiithout validation form validation still is wonky if you want to do it on the browser / client end.

I see so many "you don't need JS" articles that mention some of the basic HTML type form field validations and they're nice-ish... they're never enough.

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#202

Post by stephenhuey »

everlost wrote: post #181
overkill28 wrote: post #36

I still don't know why they stuck the "Java" name on JavaScript. Very confusing when the two languages are completely unrelated. > Java programs and JavaScript scripts are designed to run on both clients and servers, with JavaScript scripts used to modify the properties and behavior of Java objects, so the range of live online applications that dynamically present information to and interact with users over enterpris…

The biggest irony is that they believed Javascript "complemented" Java!

As others in this discussion have pointed out, Sun intended this because they wanted people to see Java as the server side language so even though applets could run Java in the browser they never did much to improve performance because they expected people to rely on JavaScript in the browser (and buy their expensive servers to run Java).

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#203

Post by krapp »

toyg wrote: post #154
krapp wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally remember the day in my school library when I found out framesets were a thing and it blew my mind that this part of the webpage could move independently from that part. And no one even uses framesets anymore. And you're right - nowadays we can stream video, audio, games, compile and run code from numerous languages right in the browser, and the web has more interesting and rich content than ever, but ever…

> everyone is mad because that means the web has moved beyond their childhoods There is a bit of that, but there is also a realization that we probably did not really need most of these "advancements".

Arguably, the web doesn't need to be anything but a simulation of paper documents connected with hyperlinks, but if it had stayed that way, the world would have been denied a great deal of creative and cultural expression in other media (including code.) For all its faults, both in the language and the ways that it's been implemented, Javascript on the web launched a revolution in writing and publishing code akin to what the Gutenberg press did for text.

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#204

Post by commandlinefan »

duxup wrote: post #201
commandlinefan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big things back then was form validation. Web pages in the late 90's were necessarily very form driven (no AJAX back then), and users were frustrated to submit a form, wait for a response, only to be told that they were missing a required input (or as you suggest, 4 digits for zip code). So there were complex frameworks to let Javascript validate the form before it was submitted - the Struts framework woul…

Yeah wiithout validation form validation still is wonky if you want to do it on the browser / client end. I see so many "you don't need JS" articles that mention some of the basic HTML type form field validations and they're nice-ish... they're never enough.

Yeah - OTOH, it was a double-edged sword, since you had to re-run the same validation on the server side, and you had to be careful to make sure they were in sync.

Of course, this brings back painful memories of multiple occasions where somebody said, "this is dumb, we already validated it on the client side, we don't have to re-validate it on the server side" and took out the server-side validation (even after I tried in vain to explain to them why that was a security hole...)

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#205

Post by hutzlibu »

alisonkisk wrote: post #198
derefr wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, basically, JavaScript was originally annointed to serve the function within the JVM ecosystem, that ended up being served by Groovy? Why didn’t that happen? And why did it take so long before we got Groovy instead, if Sun wanted was imagining something like it way back in 1995?

Sun had some great people and some good ideas and products, but as a coherent business it was a rolling train wreck.

Which why they sadly ended up digested by Oracle.

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#206

Post by nickbauman »

overkill28 wrote: post #36

I still don't know why they stuck the "Java" name on JavaScript. Very confusing when the two languages are completely unrelated. > Java programs and JavaScript scripts are designed to run on both clients and servers, with JavaScript scripts used to modify the properties and behavior of Java objects, so the range of live online applications that dynamically present information to and interact with users over enterpris…

Yeah it was called Live Connect and it was pretty amazing. It's long since gone though.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Web/LiveCon...

FWIW as a Clojure/Script developer this technology would have been kind of mind-bending if it still existed.

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#207

Post by flowerlad »

ChrisRR wrote: post #81
acdha wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing. Java was The Next Big thing and they wanted to jump on board that bandwagon. The direct integration wasn’t very common but a lot of the JavaScript objects had similar names (toString, etc.) and JS was commonly explained as a sort of junior relationship. Edit: expanding my not very common claim — I first started using JavaScript when it was called LiveScript in Netscape betas, the second non-static website…

It's very odd, if someone nowadays called their language CSharpScript, they'd get slapped with a C&D

Remember, Sun needed Netscape to make Java successful. Today Java is a server-side technology, but that's not how it started its life. Java started its life as a technology to build more powerful web pages (using embedded applets). Sun needed Netscape to bundle Java into its browser. So if Netscape wanted to leverage the hype that existed around Java at that time then Sun had to let them.

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#208

Post by DonHopkins »

Reminds me of one of Microsoft's first Dynamic HTML demos:

There were two buttons, one labeled "Our Web Site", the other labeled "Our Competitor's Web Site".

When you moved the mouse over the "Our Competitor's Web Site" button, it would quickly slide out from under your cursor before you could click it!

Then when you stopped moving your mouse, the "Our Web Site" button would slyly slide right underneath your mouse!

Dammit Microsoft!!! ;)

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#209

Post by ojosilva »

hajile wrote: post #192
ChrisRR wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very odd, if someone nowadays called their language CSharpScript, they'd get slapped with a C&D

Everything was fine because Sun owned the Javascript trademark. Oracle now owns that trademark today https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75026640&caseType=SERIAL_... For what it's worth, Microsoft lost a lawsuit over their Java clone called J. Their Javascript clone was called JScript. They made .net and C# instead and probably would have tried to make a new web language except that there was no room. One could argue…

In fact Microsoft had their own browser scripting language, called VBScript. It was released in 1996 and only ran (runs) on Internet Explorer browsers (client-side) and Windows as an interpreter (Wscript.exe).

I ended-up using it extensively for a period of time from 1998 to 2002 to automate webpages that only ran in the intranet. I also used Wscript to run certain OLE or ODBC based automation (ie. grab data from Excel and write to a file) that was clunky to write in Perl.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VBScript

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#210

Post by sodapopcan »

nonesuchluck wrote: post #139

Not being on the web until the late 90s, the part I've never figured out is, what could you actually _do_ with JavaScript in the initial versions? The way I understand it, early JavaScript could only address HTML forms, links, and images. Can't modify HTML tags. Can't insert new elements. Can't update the page and re-render until DHTML in the version 4 browsers. Can't query the network until XHR. Ok, so now what? Do…

...and don’t forget pre-loading images! We didn’t have CSS :hover back then and had to resort to image swaps for fancy hover effects in menus :)
Post reply on HN