[WEB4LIB] RE: Opera loading a javascript menu

[Richard Wiggins]

Hmmm, the historical aspects may interest only a few, but:

-- Netscape actually used LiveScript as the announced, public name for the tool in the early days.  They later leapt on the Java bandwagon as Thomas indicates. In any event, the world would've been so much simpler if they'd left it LiveScript, as JavaScript has very little to do with Java.  It's as if Pfizer had called it AspirinExtra instead of Viagra.

Here's an article from SunWorld in December, 1995 that confirms this chronology:

http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonline/swol-12-1995/swol-12-microsoft.html

-- By contrast, I think Oak WAS the internal name for Java.  In fact, Oak was an internal project for years at Java, invented completely outside of the Internet context.  As I recall Gosling's words at JavaOne in 1996, Oak was invented as an improvement on C++ and a multiplatform language.  It later turned out to be suitable to Web applications and delivery, so they took it off the shelf, polished it, renamed it, and did some brilliant marketing that made it appear to be a tool designed for the Internet from square one.

Letting Netscape use the name for an unrelated tool was one chink in the brilliant marketing campaign.

Here's some interesting history about the evolution from the Green Project to Oak to Java.  The project began in 1991. Note that one of the first test applications was a handheld device. The article tells how they evolved from handheld devices and cable TV visions to the Web:

http://java.sun.com/features/1998/05/birthday.html

/rich

Marketing droids at Netscape.  Its internal name was LiveScript before
they decided to piggyback on the initial rush of publicity over Java,
which of course was originally called Oak, until Sun realized they ran
afoul of someone else's trademark.

Opera properly advertises its compliance with ECMAScript; ECMA-262 is the
open standard version of JavaScript 1.3.  I understand that current
Netscape and IE implementations, uh, "expand and improve" upon--aka
"deviate from"--the standard.

Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu
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Richard Wiggins
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