The European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) changed its name in 1994, becoming Ecma International, to reflect its refined purpose. As a standards organization, its purpose is to facilitate modernization and consistency for various technologies. Partly in response to Microsoft's work, Netscape approached Ecma International in 1996 to standardize the language.
JavaScript became documented in the ECMA-262 specification. You may have seen the term ECMAScript or "ECMAScript-based languages". There are more ECMAScript languages than just JavaScript! ActionScript is another ECMAScript-based language that follows similar conventions to JavaScript. With the downfall of Flash as a web technology, we don't see ActionScript much in practice anymore save for a few discrete uses, but the fact remains: Ecma International created standards and they have been used to create different technologies, which helped ease the browser wars—for a time.
Perhaps the most interesting part of Ecma International with regard to JavaScript is the various versions that have been codified. To date, there are nine versions, all with varying differences. We will be using ECMAScript 2015 (also known as ES6) throughout this book, as it is the most stable baseline for web development work today. Features of the 2016-2018 versions can be used by some browsers and will be introduced.
