So, why JavaScript? Obviously, the web needed more than just static data to be useful, so, in 1995, Brendan Eich at Netscape Communications came along. Originally, the idea wasn't to create a whole new language but rather to incorporate Scheme into Netscape. That idea was superseded by the work Sun Microsystems did with Java. It was decided that this language that Eich was creating would be somewhat Java-like, and not Scheme at all. The genesis of the idea came from Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape Communications. He felt there needed to be a language to combine HTML with a "glue language" that helped with images, plugins, and—yes—interactivity.
Eich created a prototype of JavaScript (originally called Mocha, and then LiveScript) in 10 days. It's hard to believe that a 10-day prototype has become such a crucial part of the web, but those are the facts as history records them. Once Netscape developed a production-ready version, JavaScript shipped with Netscape Navigator in 1995. Shortly after JavaScript was released, Microsoft created its own version of JavaScript, called (unceremoniously) JScript. JScript shipped with Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.0 in 1996.
Now, there were two technologies competing for the same space. JScript was reverse-engineered from Netscape's JavaScript, but since the two flavors of the language had their own quirks, the browser wars began, leading sites to often have a label "Best viewed in Netscape Navigator" or "Best viewed in Internet Explorer", due to the technological complexities involved in supporting both technologies on one site. A portent of things to come, the differences in the early versions only increased. Some websites would work flawlessly in one browser and break horrifically in the other—not to mention the complications caused by other competitors to both Netscape's and Microsoft's browsers! Early developers also found the differences between the two technologies only fueled the arms race. If you experienced such degradation of performance (or, even worse, you were working with JavaScript in the early days, like me), you definitely felt the pain of the competing versions. Each company, as well as other third parties, raced to create the next best JavaScript release. At its core, JavaScript has to be interpreted client-side, and the differences between the browsers led to bedlam. Something had to be done, and Netscape had a solution, though it wouldn't be perfect.
We'll learn about this solution in the next section.
