The Web browsers are important to users and businesses all over the world. Changes on the Web landscape can affect many people and many businesses. Changes made to the core functionality of Web browsers can have dramatic effects for parties involved. Why are we saying this? The answer is JavaScript and its future as a Web programming language. Once upon a time JavaScript was a technology embraced by few, but today it is a programming environment powering, at least partly, much of the modern Web, as we know it, and almost all of the Web 2.0 flavored Web services. Web businesses all over the world rely on JavaScript to make their technology work.

There is an interest by the developers of JavaScript to enhance it and make it function similar to a full featured object oriented programming language. While many understandably welcome the development there are many questions and concerns that arise. There has been an exchange of words regarding the future of JavaScript as a programming language and both parties have valid arguments. The most notable opposite views are from Microsoft developers and the developer of the JavaScript language. If you are interested in JavaScript and its development then a closer look at the spec overview might be a good idea. Even though JavaScript was not important in Web development few years ago it is important today and if the next proposed standard (ES4) proves to be successful and widely adopted then the Web could evolve at a greater pace than ever before, but if it becomes a failure then a lot is at stake.

JavaScript’s most important missing piece of the past saw daylight few years ago with the addition of the “XMLHttpRequest”. The company that introduced it was Microsoft. This single element/object/feature is the reason why Ajax programming is possible.  JavaScript does what it does extremely well and where it is lacking functionality the Web community of brilliant developers has built the missing pieces and packaged them into what we have come to know as the JavaScript frameworks and libraries. This development has brought us the likes of Prototype framework and the jQuery framework that we think is a stroke of genius. For an example using those frameworks in addition to Google Gears (currently in Beta), it is possible to develop fast and highly functional database driven Web sites with offline storage and probably increased security. A clever use of the “XMLHttpRequest” feature makes it also easy to connect JavaScript with many programming languages be it .Net (C#, VB), Java or PHP.

We raise the question of why fix something that is not broken? Why make such a useful language more complicated? Looking at the Web sites and Web services powered by the Ajax programming environment one can only ask what a more complicated JavaScript programming language can add in terms of functionality and features for the end user?