: ECMAScript, JavaScript & JScript ECMAScript was developed as a standardization of Netscape's JavaScript and Microsoft's JScript. The canonical reference is The ECMA-262 Language Specification.

ECMAScript, JavaScript & JScript

ECMAScript was developed as a standardization of Netscape's JavaScript and Microsoft's JScript. The canonical reference is The ECMA-262 Language Specification. While JavaScript and JScript aim to be compatible with ECMAScript, they also provide additional features not described in the ECMA specifications. Other implementations of ECMAScript also exist.

The Basics

The Mozilla Developer Center offers good documentation on JavaScript.

JavaScript is most often used in the browser - see The Document Object Model.

Learning JavaScript

Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming
The MDC JavaScript Guide: A Comprehensive JavaScript Guide From Mozilla
JavaScript Core Skills from the Web Standards Curriculum

Useful links

W3C DOM Core, HTML, events and CSS compatibility tables from www.quirksmode.org JSLint Code Quality Tool by Douglas Crockford (and JSHint, a community-driven branch of the original)
Code minifiers/obfuscators: /packer/, YUI Compressor, Google Closure Compiler, UglifyJS
Code formatter/deobfuscator: JSBeautifier
JavaScript Garden
comp.lang.javascript FAQ: Very extensive guide on JavaScript quirks maintained by Google Groups' comp.lang.javascript