Mac Dropping Java Script?

[cjscafone]

Hello all, I'm new to this site/forum/thread - I hope this query is in the right place.

Anyways. Earlier this year I used the "ultimate fade-in slideshow" (Java-script) that I found on this site, on my website:

infinitepath.net

It works great and I'm very pleased with it.

I work on a Mac OSX, 10.5.8

I read online today that Mac will be dropping Java support in future versions. Can anyone tell me how this will effect the slideshow on my website? Would it help if you looked at the code on my site?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

CJScafone.

[jscheuer1]

No. Java is not javascript. They're completely different.

[djr33]

Java applets aren't used very much and they're often somewhat buggy anyway (at least in my experience). They're the things with the little coffee cup for loading and they take up a square region of the page (usually), sort of like Flash. It's a browser plugin. I won't mind seeing it go. On the other hand, for at least a while I expect you'll be able to choose to manually install it as needed.
Javascript is something completely unrelated that will be around for a long time. The names are historically related (well, vaguely) but the actual technologies are completely unrelated, and in short it's just a bad coincidence

[traq]

The names are historically related (well, vaguely) but the actual technologies are completely unrelated, and in short it's just a bad coincidence

Can't really be called a "coincidence" (since they did it on purpose), but yes, it was a "bad" idea.

[djr33]

Haha, sort of true. I was thinking that when I wrote it. What I meant is "you can think of it as a bad coincidence" or perhaps some sort of conspiracy to confuse people

[traq]

or perhaps some sort of conspiracy to confuse people

that is a very good definition of "marketing."

[djr33]

Haha, indeed.


Looking back on the history of it, it's kind of interesting: Java was cool and popular and then they had to name Javascript something, so they picked Java+script. (Older names included things like ECMAScript, and things like that, not very appealing.) But now, at least on the web, Java has more or less gone away and Javascript is what's left. So, for client-side web stuff, it looks like things have flipped, and Java applets will now be going away.
(Of course Java as a not-web-related programming language is popular for many other things like developing software, and even for JSP.)

[keyboard]

(Older names included things like ECMAScript, and things like that, not very appealing.)

You do know that ECMAscript is different from javascript?

[djr33]

Because of the name "Javascript":

ECMAScript is the scripting language standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification and ISO/IEC 16262. The language is widely used for client-side scripting on the web, in the form of several well-known dialects such as JavaScript, JScript, J# and ActionScript.

They're not identical, but before the name "Javascript" that was one option for what you could have called it.

[keyboard]

"All javascript is ecmascript, but not all ecmascript is javascript"