History of the HTML Script Tag (JavaScript) (2011)

By Xah Lee. Date: 2020-05-10. Last updated: 2025-11-20.

2011-10-10

The Evolution of the Script Tag

Yesterday, i removed all type="text/javascript" on my site. That is:

<script type="text/javascript">

becomes

<script>

This is a story of political chaos of the web.

In the beginning of time, a time of Netscape kingdom, ~1996, it was just <SCRIPT>.
Then, with Microsoft's meddling, with JScript and VBScript, it became language="JavaScript" or language="JScript".
By ~1999, a entity called W3C emerged, over-peering correctness on earth, it declared that the attribute should be type="text/javascript", and is required.
However, in practice, both the “language” and “type” are always optional, and no browser's parser actually give a flying fuck about it.
Then, around ~2007, the standard body changed its mind and thought that the type really should be type="application/javascript" or type="application/ecmascript". Nobody in their right mind ever used that.
Then, in our glorious HTML5 era, ~2009, ruled by Google and Apple, in their HTML5 spec, it's back to <script>.

History: HTML Script Tag Survey, Year 2006

the following is written around 2006.

In practice, you'll see type="text/javascript" instead of type="application/javascript"

The text/javascript is still ok, but has been deprecated since 2006-04.

Of existing code on the web, you will also see:

<script language="JavaScript">...</script>

or just

<script>...</script>

The language= is the original specification when Netscape invented JavaScript in 1997. Later on, standard bodies invented the type= and made it a required attribute. However, as of 2005-08, major websites do not clearly show any of them winning the popularity contest:

amazon.com uses both type= and language= and sometimes just the language=.
apple.com uses just the language=.
yahoo.com uses just the language=.
orkut.com uses just the type=.
msn.com sometimes uses both, sometimes one or the other.
ebay.com sometimes uses both, sometimes one or the other.
google.com simply uses just <script>

For all practical purposes, one can just use <script> and it doesn't make any difference. If you want your code to conform to w3c standard, use <script type="application/javascript"> . This is recommended in RFC4329 (published in 2006-04), which also declares text/javascript as obsolete.

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