I've fond memories of Netscape back in day. For a few years used the Netscape suite to build websites, but the Netscape browser itself is what was superior to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.. I don't even remember what it was - but it was a lot better than IE when it came out. I particularly remember the frustration with building webpages that would work nicely in either browser (I had built dozens of websites back then for motels, restaurants, rentals, etc.) There had always been big incompatibility issues between the two.
Anyway.. Something I had never really realized about Netscape until reading this article (which I truncated below); Netscape was the creator of JavaScript! I never knew that! had utilized it extensively, and now it shines a whole new light for me on those frequent webpage incompatibilities between browsers back then:
In 1995, a Netscape employee wrote a hack in 10 days that now runs the Internet
Thirty years later, JavaScript is the glue that holds the interactive web together, warts and all.
Benj Edwards – Dec 4, 2025 12:59 PM |
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/in-1995-a-netscape-employee-wrote-a-hack-in-10-days-that-now-runs-the-internet/
Excerpts:
Thirty years ago today, Netscape Communications and Sun Microsystems issued a joint press release announcing JavaScript, .. The language emerged from a frantic 10-day sprint at pioneering browser company Netscape, where engineer Brendan Eich hacked together a working internal prototype during May 1995. ..
Eich’s initial 10-day hack now run on approximately 98.9 percent of all websites with client-side code, making JavaScript the dominant programming language of the web. .. According to several surveys, JavaScript consistently ranks among the most widely used programming languages in the world.
In crafting JavaScript, Netscape wanted a scripting language that could make webpages interactive, something lightweight that would appeal to web designers and non-professional programmers. ...
... Netscape continued tweaking the design. The rushed development left JavaScript with quirks and inconsistencies that developers still complain about today. So many changes were coming down the pipeline, in fact, that it began to annoy one of the industry’s most prominent figures at the time.
“Bill Gates was bitching about us changing JS all the time,” Eich later recalled of the fall of 1996. Microsoft created its own implementation called JScript for Internet Explorer, leading to years of browser incompatibility that plagued web developers.
Before finalizing on the title “JavaScript,” the language cycled through multiple names. Eich initially called his prototype “Mocha,” then Netscape renamed it LiveScript for the September 1995 beta release of Netscape 2.0. The JavaScript name arrived in December when Netscape and Sun finalized their partnership. ..
That name has been a source of confusion for three decades. It was a marketing decision meant to capitalize on the buzz around Java at the time. .. “JavaScript will be the most effective method to connect HTML-based content to Java applets.” ..
Confusion about its relationship to Java continues: The two languages share a name, some syntax conventions, and virtually nothing else. .. The distinction between the two languages, as one Stack Overflow user put it in 2010, is similar to the relationship between the words “car” and “carpet.” ..
Today, JavaScript appears across virtually every corner of web development. .. The language now powers not just websites but mobile applications..
Read full article https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/in-1995-a-netscape-employee-wrote-a-hack-in-10-days-that-now-runs-the-internet/