JavaScript 2 Looking Good Thanks to ‘Harmony’ Project
The dust is finally starting to settle in the world of JavaScript, which is the primary tool that powers many of web 2.0’s most popular features.
As we’ve mentioned in the past, JavaScript is due for an update and the specification on which JavaScript is based — known as ECMAScript — was planning a serious overhaul.
However, the ECMAScript 4 specification, which would have been the basis of JavaScript 2, has been reworked and its ambitions somewhat curtailed in favor of practicality.
Virtually as soon as ECMAScript 4 was proposed a group headed by Microsoft and Yahoo split off and suggested ECMAScript 3.1 as an incremental step to 4.0. Since then the two groups has worked in conjunction, but also sometimes at odds.
Fortunately for web developers hungry for the the next generation of JavaScript, the ECMAScript specification is nearing completion. As John Resig, JavaScript evangelist for the Mozilla Corporation and creator of the JQuery library, reports, the two groups have now reached an agreement known as the ECMAScript Harmony project.
Many developers may be disappointed to learn that some of the more radical changes have been tossed out the window. For instance, the very Python-like packages and namespaces proposals have been rejected (for a full rundown on what has changed see this outline).
But, in spite of some dropped features, Resig thinks the ECMAScript project is headed in the right direction. “Seeing an agreement between all of the largest players in the ECMAScript space (Mozilla, Microsoft, Apple, Opera, Google, Yahoo) is quite historic and will stand to serve users well.”
As Resig outlines the new agreement, the ECMAScript Harmony project will pursue the following goals:
- Focus work on ECMAScript 3.1 with full collaboration of all parties, and target two interoperable implementations by early next year.
- Collaborate on the next step beyond ECMAScript 3.1, which will include syntactic extensions but which will be more modest than ECMAScript 4 in both semantic and syntactic innovation.
- Some ECMAScript 4 proposals have been deemed unsound for the web, and are off the table for good: packages, namespaces and early binding. This conclusion is key to Harmony.
- Other goals and ideas from ECMAScript 4 are being rephrased to keep consensus in the committee; these include a notion of classes based on existing ES3 concepts combined with proposed ECMAScript 3.1 extensions.
Of course JavaScript isn’t the only language based on ECMAScript, Adobe’s ActionScript is also based on ECMAScript and it isn’t clear how the new proposal will affect the future of ActionScript. Adobe had already pushed ActionScript forward to adopt many of the ECMAScript 4 changes. Now that the ECMAScript 4 draft itself has been overhauled it’s unclear where exactly that leaves ActionScript 3/4.
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