It is not that often that Netscape Corporation releases a new version of JavaScript. The newest releases of Netscape Communicator (4.06 and 4.5) support a new version of JavaScript, version 1.3. The most significant change in this version is its compliance with ECMA (European Computer Manufacturing Association) specification, ECMA-262, and ISO (International Standards Organization) specification, ISO-16262. The drive behind the development of such standards is a testimonial to JavaScript becoming a more mature, widespread, and accepted language.

Most of JavaScript 1.3's new features and changes reflect the current ECMA-262. Others speculate on the next release of the ECMA standard, ECMAScript 2.0. The most notable feature from the former group is the support of Unicode, a much-richer character-coding standard than ASCII. Unicode allows for over 65,000 unique characters while ASCII is limited to just 127 characters. The Date Object also underwent a major overhaul in JavaScript 1.3, with new and changed methods. You can see from these two examples that JavaScript 1.3 is geared towards internationalizing JavaScript and making it the standard scripting language all over the world. The extended number of characters supported by Unicode will provide a better support for the multitude of languages. The changes in the Date object are targeted for making it more suitable for authors in other continents and time zones.

In this column you'll learn:

• How to compare JavaScript 1.3 and ECMA standard.
• How to use the new Unicode standard.
• How to use the new top-level properties: NaN, Infinity, and undefined, and the global function isFinite.
• How to use the new toSource method.
• How to use the new and improved Date object.
• How to use the new Date methods.
• How to use the new Universal Coordinate Time Get Methods.
• How to use the new Universal Coordinate Time Set Methods.
• How to use the modified Date methods.