13JAVASCRIPT AND THE BROWSER
The next chapters of this book will talk about web browsers. Without web browsers, there would be no JavaScript. Or even if there were, no one would ever have paid any attention to it.
Web technology has been decentralized from the start, not just technically but also in the way it evolved. Various browser vendors have added new functionality in ad hoc and sometimes poorly thought-out ways, which then, sometimes, ended up being adopted by others—and finally set down as standards.
This is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it is empowering to not have a central party control a system but have it be improved by various parties working in loose collaboration (or occasionally open hostility). On the other hand, ...
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