If you were born in the 80s or 90s, without doubt, you were a witness to the internet evolution. The first web pages were composed only of black text in a white screen; everything they wrote was in pure HTML format, and really, really static. After some years, the first CSS was adding some color to the web, and, after some unsuccessful attempts, JavaScript did appear.
From its first appearance, JavaScript has improved over the years and adapted to build the next generation of web pages. Many companies such as Microsoft were involved in the evolution of this language, adding features and increasing its popularity. This new scripting language allowed the developers to improve the customer experience and application performance and, in a short time, there began to appear the first JavaScript frameworks that made JavaScript the new rock star of web development.
All this sounds great, but, was it always as awesome as the strong language we have today? Uhmm, no it was not. The first JavaScript version was created by Brendan Eich in 1995 for the Netscape Navigator, named in those times as Mocha, then LiveScript, and finally, JavaScript.
Let's explore more about the features of this powerful language and how it becomes one of the most used for application development.
In this chapter, we will walk through the following topics:
- JavaScript fundamentals
- The ECMAScript standard
- Setting up our environment
- The Aurelia framework
- The Aurelia command line
- Overview of the example app
