Where to start?

i want to learn javascipt, but something is confusing me, i cant find a javascript documentation site like php.net, like a general javascript site, i’ve search i stumbled upon a article that all browser has its own javascript version support and doc, like javascript mdn, jscript, v8 etc., so i’m guessing there is no general javascript documentation? if mozilla is the core developer for javascript, do all browser supports javacript mdn version? i’m really confuse here… please advise thank you :slight_smile:

Yep, MDN is the best place to search for how specific JS features are supposed to work.

A good book such as http://eloquentjavascript.net/00_intro.html will help you get started, it gets pretty advanced by the end but take it at your own pace and you’ll learn what you need.

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They all follow the same spec but not all browsers have implemented the the newer features.
There’s a section at the bottom of each page on browser compatibility.

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Even though it isn’t the official reference it is far more readable than the official reference and it has very few errors.

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whats the difference between Javascript ES6 and Javascript MDN? which do you prefer to learn the foundation of javascript? i am more aiming for the interactivity of the client view side of the web… thank you

You’ll find that the MDN site covers ES6 as well as earlier versions - e.g. let was introduced under ES6. If you scroll down towards the bottom of that page I linked to, you’ll see that it indicates which version of the specification that particular statement was introduced under.

It’s worth noting that MDN is a JavaScript reference, not the specification, nor a version of JavaScript. As it’s a Mozilla site though, you might expect it to lean towards the way in which the JavaScript specification has been implemented in Firefox in some ways. That said, it is probably the best JavaScript reference out there at the moment, and as mentioned above, it does make every effort to show the level of compatibility for each part of the JS language in all the main browsers.

From the main MDN JavaScript page

The standard for JavaScript is ECMAScript. As of 2012, all modern browsers fully support ECMAScript 5.1. Older browsers support at least ECMAScript 3. On June 17, 2015, ECMA International published the sixth major version of ECMAScript, which is officially called ECMAScript 2015, and is more commonly referred to as ECMAScript 6 or ES6. Since then ECMAScript standards are on yearly release cycles. This documentation refers to the latest draft version, which is currently ECMAScript 2017.

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That left out that ECMAScript 2016 (sometimes referred to as ES7) was release in June this year.

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It’s perhaps better covered on that point here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript

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Side question: if i use node.js and install it to my backend for my webapp/site, does javascript run/work using node.js without depending on the browser js engines such as mdn, v8 js engines etc., like i will turn off javascript on the browser…

Does all js engines can run with node.js? Or there is a separate js version?

Node runs JavaScript on the server. This is completely separate to the JavaScript engine running in the browser.

All communication between client and server happens over HTTP, what version of JavaScript runs on the client is irrelevant to the server.

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