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Speaking JavaScript
book

Speaking JavaScript

by Axel Rauschmayer
February 2014
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
460 pages
8h 32m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Speaking JavaScript

Chapter 6. Historical JavaScript Milestones

It took JavaScript a long time to make an impact. Many JavaScript-related technologies existed for a while until they were discovered by the mainstream. This section describes what happened from JavaScript’s creation until today. Throughout, only the most popular projects are mentioned and many are ignored, even if they were first. For example, the Dojo Toolkit is listed, but there is also the lesser-known qooxdoo, which was created around the same time. And Node.js is listed, even though Jaxer existed before it:

1997—Dynamic HTML
Dynamic HTML allows you to dynamically change the content and appearance of a web page. You achieve this by manipulating the Document Object Model (DOM) of the page, a tree-shaped data structure. Things you can do include changing content, changing style, and showing and hiding elements. Dynamic HTML appeared first in Internet Explorer 4 and in Netscape Navigator 4.
1999—XMLHttpRequest
This API lets a client-side script send an HTTP or HTTPS request to a server and get back data, usually in a text format (XML, HTML, JSON). It was introduced in Internet Explorer 5.
2001—JSON, a JavaScript-based data exchange format

In 2001, Douglas Crockford named and documented JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), whose main idea is to use JavaScript syntax to store data in text format. JSON uses JavaScript literals for objects, arrays, strings, numbers, and booleans to represent structured data. For example:

{
    "first": 
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781449365028Errata