Why variable hoisting after return works on some browsers, and some not?

In JavaScript variables are moved to the top of script and then run. So when you run it will do

var myVar1;
alert(myVar1);
return false;

This is because JavaScript doesn't really have a true sense of lexical scoping. This is why it's considered best practice to have all your variables declared at the top of the area they will be used to prevent hoisting causing a problem. JSLint will moan about this.

This is a good article that explains it: http://www.adequatelygood.com/2010/2/JavaScript-Scoping-and-Hoisting

The return is invalid. If you want to do a true hoisting example (taken from the link above) do

var foo = 1; 
function bar() { 
    if (!foo) { 
        var foo = 10; 
    } 
    alert(foo); 
} 
bar();

This will alert 10

Below is my understanding and I have read it somewhere but can't find all the sources that I read so am open to correction.

This Alerts thanks to the differences in the JavaScript JIT. TraceMonkey(http://ejohn.org/blog/tracemonkey/) I believe will take the JavaScript and do a quick static analysis and then do JIT and then try to run it. If that fails then obviously nothing works.

V8 doesn't do the static analysis and moves to the JIT then runs so something. It's more akin to Python. If you run the script in the Developer console (ctrl+shift+j in Windows) in Chrome it will throw an error but also run to give you the alert.

Sometimes hoisting is explained in a way which may give wrong impression, i.e. the variables and functions are hoisted by JavaScript engine as if they were physically moved on top, which is not actually right, as demonstrated by the code below:

console.log(a);
var a = 'Hello World!';

What we see on console is undefined, not 'Hello World', so we got the behavior of the following code

var a;
console.log(a);
a = 'Hello World!';

not the behavior of

var a = 'Hello World!';
console.log(a);

which you may get the impression from the variables and functions declaration being moved to top statement.

But JavaScript is not actually moving your code anywhere. You need to understand execution context in JavaScript. It has two phases creation phase and execution phase. In creation phase memory space is created for these variables and functions, and people seem to confuse this step with hoisting. JavaScript is actually not moving your code anywhere, what happens is JavaScript has created memory space for all your code i.e. variables and functions, functions can be placed fully in memory but in case of variables the assignments are processed in execution phase of the execution context. So when you do var a = 'Hello World!', JavaScript engine knows the value of a when it starts executing it in execution phase of execution context, so it puts a placeholder undefined, and all variables are initially set to undefined in JavaScript. So it is not good to rely on hoisting and see undefined. So it is always good to declare variables and functions on top of your code.