Talk:JavaScript engine/Archive 1

2007 merge
I think this should be merged with the Javascript article, if it makes sense to do so. Look at ECMAScript engine - it is a simple redirect to ECMAScript. I suspect probably this means the List of ECMAScript engines and List of JavaScript engines should also be merged. 125.62.64.155 12:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

This article is awfully close to copyvio, too. See the Mozilla page.--Inonit 14:34, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

2009 restart
Restarted in Summer 2009 for new JS engines in browsers. Digita (talk) 01:08, 25 July 2009 (UTC)


 * There's a lot of information here that's redundant with JavaScript, and the info that's not redundant could be condensed and merged with the main article. --Maian (talk) 05:36, 25 July 2009 (UTC)


 * KDE's frostbyte came out before squirrelfish 198.144.209.8 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:06, 30 October 2009 (UTC).

In Resurrection truth stays the same no change Atm Sugarbrown (talk) 11:38, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Google Chrome in introduction?
It doesn't appear obvious to me that Chrome deserves an entire paragraph in the introductory section, discussing how its V8 engine is or isn't the fastest of its kind. It seems to me like the paragraph would fit better under the "JavaScript engines" section. Thoughts?

Also, the sentence "Later, however, Google Chrome won in the races of better performance" seemed especially ambiguous to me. At first glance it seems like nothing but a value judgment, ostensibly by a Chrome fanboy, purporting to establish his favorite browser as "the best." I'd like to remove it entirely, but thought I should get some other opinions first. In the meantime, I added a "clarify" tag. --Foolishgrunt (talk) 22:43, 12 February 2010 (UTC)


 * To me, this whole article is mostly redundant or should be merged with with JavaScript and ECMAScript. The line between JavaScript and ECMAScript engines is very blurred, since most ECMAScript dialects claim conformance with JavaScript and have their unique engines. Opera, for example, emphasizes that it has a ECMAScript engine rather than a JavaScript engine. --Maian (talk) 05:45, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Opera new JS engine
Opera has a new Javascript engine in their latest beta. Should this new engine Carakan, be listed here? It is a native code generating JIT that currently can support generating code for x86 and x64. But plans are to support native arm code generation as well for their mobile platforms (meaning opera's javascript engine will blaze on any platform Opera is on). --198.108.192.50 (talk) 23:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

In Truth Resurrection is no change Atm Sugarbrown (talk) 11:42, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

What about Microsoft?
Microsoft's JScript - used in Internet Explorer, Windows Scripting Host, IIS and probably elsewhere - deserves a mention. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.178.56.128 (talk) 20:50, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
 * and now again: is ms here really at the right place? I mean, they have Jscript and Chakra is a JScript engine, or am I wrong? OK, it should be explained and mentioned, but it doesn't belong here! mabdul 20:10, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
 * JScript is JavaScript. For example, the original implementation in IE was a 100% faithful (bugs and all) reverse engineered version of Netscape's JavaScript.  JScript adds some global helper objects that aren't in the standard, but so do other JavaScript implementations.  But the language itself is identical.  So how doesn't it fit here? 86.178.56.247 (talk) 13:39, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Who is the fastest .... this should not be the place to discuss...
Some parts of this almost reads like a commentry from a race track.... I think it should suffice to reduce the entire stamenet into a summary that there is ongoing developement on making the fastest JavaScript engine. The actual fastes engine changes between releases, and is monitored by the popular press. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sorenriise (talk • contribs) 22:05, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Text in question:  There has since been a race by browser developers to develop even faster JavaScript engines. In 2008, Google Chrome was praised for its JavaScript performance, but other browsers with JavaScript engines soon surpassed it. Later, however, Google Chrome won in the races of better performance. Chrome's strength is its application performance and JavaScript processing speed, both of which were independently verified by multiple websites to be the fastest amongst the major browsers of its time. With the advent of WebKit's Squirrelfish Extreme and Mozilla's TraceMonkey JavaScript virtual machines, Chrome's JavaScript execution performance has been found to be slower. Google responded with the Danish developed V8 (JavaScript engine) which boosted JS performance in Google Chrome 2.


 * be bold! ;) mabdul 11:15, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Faster than what?
From the introduction:


 * Released June 30, 2009 Firefox 3.5 includes the optimization technique which offered "performance improvements ranging between 20 and 40 times faster in some cases"

This is confusing. Clearly FF3.5 is 20-40x faster than something, but what? The cited source isn't all that clear, and to add to the confusion it doesn't mention FF3.5, but FF3.1 ("new optimization technique to bring a big performance boost ... is planned for inclusion in Firefox 3.1"). My guess is that it's 20-40x faster than FF3.0, but unless we can state what is the reference the sentence is meaningless. Jakew (talk) 10:28, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * since there wasn't anyff3.1, it was the differences between the browserversions 3.0 and 3.5! mabdul 14:09, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps, but I think the article needs to be clearer about which versions are being compared. If nothing else it would be less confusing for those of us who don't have the version history of Firefox memorised. [[Image:Smile eye.png]] Jakew (talk) 14:48, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

"JavaScript engines" are "ECMAScript engines"?
I think it would be better to combine the list of JavaScript engines in this article with the list of ECMAScript engines in the article List of ECMAScript engines. They are actually the same thing, aren't they? Similarly, it's better to write that "JScript and JavaScript are implementations (or dialects, whatever you like) of ECMAScript", and that "Chakra" is an ECMAScript engine.

To my understanding after reading a lot of primary source material, there is a conflation or confusion between the terms JScript and JavaScript, and an avoidance of the term ECMAScript, from time to time, in the Wikipedia articles on the ECMAScript family of dialects and implementations, leading to some duplication of material and unnecessary articles and disambiguation.

There are lots of comments in this talk page and other talk pages around the same or similar point.

I'm not saying that the term "JavaScript engine" is nonsense, far from it. It's just that the only precise interpretation I can think of for "JavaScript engines" as distinct from "ECMAScript engines" would be to refer to that subset of engines produced by vendors who are calling their language "JavaScript", basically every vendor except Microsoft, I think. I would suggest that distinction is not particularly helpful for us. Also when I see the term "JavaScript engine" I keep thinking the writer "really means" ECMAScript engine, but wants to use a more friendly term. But I think it's better for us in the long run to be more precise in an encyclopedia.

I wanted to put this out for discussion first, given the large amount of work going into this part of the Computing Languages section of Wikipedia. DonToto (talk) 06:47, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

hardware acceleration
should we mention that ms and apple are bashing against each other with the "best hardware acceleration". like ms does in the video at http://www.favbrowser.com/internet-explorer-9-vs-safari-5-hardware-acceleration/ and http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/06/07/internet-explorer-9-and-safari-5.aspx as described there: opera performs much better than all other browsers WITHOUt hardware acceleration at the moment! mabdul 19:50, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Node.js?
I came to this article looking for a definition of "Javascript Runtime", as I was looking for clarification of what Node.js is... but there is no mention of it here, and I thought it was a massive project? Is it worthy of mention on this article? 68.61.44.209 (talk) 14:51, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I initially had the same thoughts as you, however, Node.js is officially a Javascript runtime that is built on the V8 Javascript engine, as stated on the Node.js website "Node.js® is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine." See also the opening description of the wiki for V8 (JavaScript engine) which lists Node.js as one of several server-side projects which use the V8 engine. Chaozu42 (talk) 21:32, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Maintenance and rating of JavaScript articles
Concerning editing and maintaining JavaScript-related articles...

Collaboration...
If you are interested in collaborating on JavaScript articles or would like to see where you could help, stop by WikiProject JavaScript and feel free to add your name to the participants list. Both editors and programmers are welcome.

Where to list JavaScript articles
We've found over 300 JavaScript-related articles so far. If you come across any others, please add them to that list.

User scripts
The WikiProject is also taking on the organization of the Wikipedia community's user script support pages. If you are interested in helping to organize information on the user scripts (or are curious about what we are up to), let us know!

If you have need for a user script that does not yet exist, or you have a cool idea for a user script or gadget, you can post it at User scripts/Requests. And if you are a JavaScript programmer, that's a great place to find tasks if you are bored.

How to report JavaScript articles in need of attention
If you come across a JavaScript article desperately in need of editor attention, and it's beyond your ability to handle, you can add it to our list of JavaScript-related articles that need attention.

Rating JavaScript articles
At the top of the talk page of most every JavaScript-related article is a WikiProject JavaScript template where you can record the quality class and importance of the article. Doing so will help the community track the stage of completion and watch the highest priority articles more closely.

Thank you. The Transhumanist 01:10, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

'Implementations' section out of date
The Implementations section states no particular year that the version numbers apply to. It doesn't look very out of date, but would require constant editing to keep up. I would feel more comfortable if it just said that the table applied to 2017 or whenever it was last updated, and left it at that. Readers can get up-to-date version numbers from manufacturers' websites. OsamaBinLogin (talk) 05:28, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Alternative name - ECMAScript engine
I'd like to explain (to User:Pmffl who reverted my edit) why "ECMAScript engine" should be mentioned in this article:

"ECMAScript engine" redirects here since 2005‎. It can be considered an alternative name for "JavaScript engine", and, popular alternative names usually should be included in the lead section. (see WP:OTHERNAMES, MOS:LEADALT)

It's also good for user experience: imagine a user clicks a ECMAScript engine link (or searches "ECMAScript engine") then lands on this JavaScript engine article, he/she could be confused: "why I need 'ECMAScript engine' but Wikipedia gives me 'JavaScript engine'?" Therefore it's more user-friendly to explain those popular alternative names that redirect here.

I'm fully aware of that there's a difference between JavaScript and ECMAScript, but "JavaScript engines" and "ECMAScript engines" usually refer to kind of the same group of engines in modern time. Feel free to start a new article "ECMAScript engine" if you really think "ECMAScript engine" has a major difference and should have a seperate article, but I don't see the need there, and even we seperate them, it's still a good idea to explain the two terms' relation/difference in their articles (kind of the same reason for using which generates "Not to be confused with Foo." hatnote). Thank you. --Tomchen1989 (talk) 09:34, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

(FYI, in the Special:WhatLinksHere/JavaScript_engine list, you can see several articles that have the link ECMAScript engine which eventually redirects here. We also have a List of ECMAScript engines article and List of JavaScript engines that redirects to it since 2005, thus the two terms are kind of used interchangeably, and again it's good to explain why we use them interchangeably in this article)--Tomchen1989 (talk) 09:44, 29 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Good points, Tom. -Pmffl (talk) 19:10, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

"ES engine" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect ES engine. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. signed,Rosguill talk 17:30, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Do not delete alternative names and useful abbrs
In the discussion at, I told User:Pmffl it's usually a good practice to mention all alternative names in the article to avoid confusion of the users that land on the page through redirection. Pmffl finally agreed to keep "ECMAScript engine" but still completely removed all abbreviations mentioned in the article including "JS engine", "ES engine" and "(JS)". Now, exactly what I anticipated is happening: users are confused about ES engine that redirects/links here (see Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 August 23). I've just added back these abbreviations although not in bold text. Please do not delete alternative names and useful abbreviations, they make the article more informative and avoid confusion by redirected user, please think about user experience when editing Wikipedia articles.--Tomchen1989 (talk) 08:41, 28 August 2019 (UTC)


 * The JS and ES abbreviations are not actually used within this article, so they shouldn't be defined. I removed them now.
 * Also, for Tom's concern about ES engine, it's now a proper disambiguation page. And the "JS engine" redirect to this article is not used at all. So those conerns are moot. -Pmffl (talk) 15:49, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Agree. ES Engine should be kept. AXO NOV  (talk) ⚑ 08:09, 11 September 2021 (UTC)