Does JavaScript have a mascot, logo, insignia or otherwise stylistically engaging representation or alias? If not, who would be the best person/organization to get some momentum behind this kind of thing? Doug Crockford?
+3
A:
With the way things are headed, my guess is that the large part of marketing emphasis will go to the frameworks built around JS (scriptaculous, prototype, jquery, yui, etc). With how standard they're becoming, they're really establishing themselves as the face(s) of JavaScript even more than JavaScript, itself.
dclowd9901
2010-03-16 16:33:08
yeah, that's a good point. javascript is a victim of its own success or lack of marketing?
dreftymac
2010-03-16 16:36:54
Maybe but, really, does it *need* a logo or brand at this point? At about 91% website penetration, it's already extremely popular, virtually as standard as CSS.http://trends.builtwith.com/docinfo/Javascript
dclowd9901
2010-03-16 17:09:27
+1
A:
Javascript isn't even its real name, so how could it have a mascot or an insignia? There's a benefit to being anonymous, though. It's nobody's proprietary darling, yet everyone knows what it is and it has pretty much become the universal client-side scripting language. All that without a brand image. At this point, I think branding it could only do harm, not good.
Robusto
2010-03-16 16:36:41
Upvote even though I disagree. First, OpenSource non-proprietary branding is (like it or not) par for the course (see e.g., http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/31913). Second, no one ever says ECMAScript with a straight face, just like no one in the USA ever calls Soccer "Football", unless they are trying to prove a point.
dreftymac
2010-03-16 16:42:30
@dreftymac: Yours is a worthy question (hence my own up vote). I personally would hate to see the wrong logo suddenly jangle my nerves, though. For example, I like the Firefox browser, and I am OK with the fox logo they use *as a piece of art*, but perhaps because they insist on it being so large when they use it it always feels like overkill to me.
Robusto
2010-03-16 17:27:38
+1
A:
Historically, JavaScript has been associated with the rhinoceros, as seen on the cover of the original O'Reilly book, and thereafter used as the project name for the Java JS engine. If you wanted an insignia to go with eg. JS file icons, I'd go for the rhino head.
Only Mozilla's implementation is “JavaScript” though... IE has JScript, Adobe have ActionScript, and the other browsers have their own dialects. ECMAScript brings it all together, but ECMA, being a dull but worthy standards group, are unlikely to want to do much marketing. I wouldn't really like to see ECMA TC39's stab at a mascot! (Hell, Duke was bad enough...)
bobince
2010-03-16 16:44:14