There have been several revisions of Javascript/ECMAScript/JScript, and different versions have been deployed in different situations. This table details which versions relate to which browser.
Javascript | Mozilla | JScript | IE | ECMA |
---|---|---|---|---|
JavaScript 1.0 | Netscape 2 | JScript 1.0 | Early IE 3 | |
JavaScript 1.1 | Netscape 3 | JScript 2.0 | Late IE 3 | ECMAScript 1 plus switch |
JavaScript 1.2 | Netscape 4 | - | - | |
JavaScript 1.3 | Netscape 4.5 | JScript 3.0 | IE 4 | |
JavaScript 1.4 | Server only | - | - | |
JavaScript 1.5 | Mozilla/Netscape 6 | JScript 5 | IE 5 | ECMAScript 3 |
warning on IE's "support" of JavaScript 1.5
IE does support JavaScript 1.5, but it doesn't support it in the "language" attribute of the script tag.
If you include the language attribute (which was originally meant to allow a page to gracefully degrade in older browsers, a concept that's increasingly obsolete), you can't have a value greater than "javascript1.2". Anything besides "javascript" or "javascript1.2" and IE will likely not execute the script.