Lets stop wringing our hands regarding Microsoft. I think it’s about time that we see some leadership from some of the web browser vendors. We really need to get things going. The language has not changed since 1999. If I built a web site today like I did in 1999, I would be embarrassed.

The bottom line is that Microsoft will do what it pleases. No one can make them write to the standards. IE is quickly becoming obsolete. Lack of canvas support and now this. The other web browsers are slowly adding one compelling after another. It’s like Microsoft wants the web to fail or something. But the web is bigger than Microsoft.

In the end, if Microsoft refuses to implement the standard, I’ll compile some kind of special js file for IE using a pre-processor. I already minimize my code, so I already do something like this already.

I think Microsoft would be stupid to ignore the new spec, however. The reason I say this is because the improvements in the language are going to result in dramatic improvements in execution speed. With Web 2.0 applications the differences are going to be stark. There will come a day when someone will say - Hey, things are so much faster and more secure using Safari, or Firefox or Opera. And that’s the same browser that I have on my Phone already.

JS becomes extinct (or should I say made extinct/obsolete?), because it failed to adapt to the changing web-environment. Either because its development (got) stalled, or because it lost (was made to loose) its competition against other proprietary languages.

Simon, web developer and biologist

Cite Brendan:
“It is false to claim that ES4 does not let you do anything you can’t already do in ES3. (…) Can you hide names without three times the object overhead (for private members using closures)?”

I take for granted that backwards compatibility will be assured… but it will take a long time to get me to develop ES4 specific code. Reason ist not so much that I don´t like the new features. Reason is, I prefer a small syntax set over a bigger one. It is true that you need to know about techniques like closures, continuations and such - but once you know them you usually know more about JS engine behaviour than other coders programming in a more formalized style. In my eyes this is worth much more in a programming team.
For the record I also have done programming for almost 30 years. My only concern is to keep on track and not get into problems using a new codebase. As to the name space, a question: say I run a #1 site utilizing member-coded meshups. Would it be possible for somebody to disallow certain libs by pre-occupying its namespace? Can a namespace be hi-jacked?

Bottom line: if ES4 provides both ways of coding - great. But I will very closely evaluate before using an ES4 specific feature. Also I fear every restriction may come with an inherent risk.

Last thing: thank you all for all the info… it is really exciting to watch the ongoing discussion here and in other spots.

Many of the new features have undergone a few revisions in one or more of Opera, Flash, or Firefox. It’s only completely new for Microsoft, because their support for open Web technologies has stagnated while they devote resources to proprietary plugins like Silverlight.

Ric, there’s no cost to web developers, they keep using ES3 for as long as they like. Browsers that do not have Windows Update on their side will be backward compatible when handling ES3 content. Those wanting to opt into ES4 will face the usual law-of-zeroes bugs as new implementations come on line, but nothing those kinds of early adopters haven’t faced before in ES2, ES3, JS1.6, and JS1.7. In spite of Firefox extending JS, the web didn’t break and we did not bounce off it, i.e., lose market share because of the extensions.

/be