JavaScript is a dialect of the standardized ECMAScript programming language, primarily used for scripting web-pages. Use this tag for questions regarding ECMAScript and its dialects/ implementations: JavaScript, JScript, etc., excluding ActionScript.
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 http://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
