Yeah, you read it well…
Forget about ECMAScript 4 and stuff you may have learned while using language based on its draft ( yeah for instance AS3, Javascript 2.0 ). The ECMAScript 4 has been reject in favor of small changes to ECMAScript 3.1. This has been decided at the Oslo meeting.
Here are the main conclusions( check the post on the mailing list ):
Focus work on ES3.1 with full collaboration of all parties, and target two interoperable implementations by early next year.
Collaborate on the next step beyond ES3.1, which will include syntactic extensions but which will be more modest than ES4 in both semantic and syntactic innovation.
Some ES4 proposals have been deemed unsound for the Web, and are off the table for good: packages, namespaces and early binding. This conclusion is key to Harmony.
Other goals and ideas from ES4 are being rephrased to keep consensus in the committee; these include a notion of classes based on existing ES3 concepts combined with proposed ES3.1 extensions.
So yeah, goodbye package, goodbye namespace, …
As everyone, I was pleased that Adobe based AS3 on a standard, but now that ECMAScript won’t be, what will happen to AS3?
Adobe plans was to deliver a language based on a standard. So will they drop package, namespace and all ES4 features to meet the ES3.1 requirement and so step back? Or maybe try to find another standard close enought to ECMAScript 4 to base AS4 on? Or just continue developing their ( now ) “own” language?
In any cases, that’s just sad. Sad for all the developer who have invested time into this draft, sad for all the companies that bet on it and sad for user who have learned it…
And ( I didn’t wan’t to put this in my post but can’t help it ) you can probably thanks a big company that has a browser having 80% of the market that insisted they would never support EcmaScript 4
Sources:
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es4-discuss/2008-August/003400.html
http://ejohn.org/blog/ecmascript-harmony/
http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/08/ru-roh-adobe-screwed-by-ecmascript.html
http://joshblog.net/2008/08/13/how-will-ecmascript-harmony-affect-actionscript-3/
Update
Here is Adobe answer.
http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2008/08/blog_entry_dated_81408_715_pm.html
They will continue AS3 based on ECMAScript 4 and push it forward.
