I was going to sum this all up when the flu medicine wore off - but it turns out someone already did the leg work for me - score one for the tubes!
Looks like the next version of JavaScript that was in progress has been officially sacked. Now they’re going to try it again. Gory details available here : ECMAScript Harmony
From my point of view - I’m seriously hoping that means that they are now keeping the dynamic freedom that made JavaScript fun - since that seemed to be the main thing on the chopping block.
The other question is what happens to ActionScript since it was all set to merge into the new JavaScript world:
From John:
@David Brewer: Thats definitely not clear. ActionScript 3 is based on a very different ECMAScript 4 draft, though - one from 1999. The current ECMAScript 4 work is an extension of that supported by Adobe and wouldve become ActionScript 4. However, the new ECMAScript 3.1 and Harmony proposals are not compatible with ActionScript 3/4, at all. The committee acknowledges this and its unclear as to what will happen because of it.