Degrading Script Tags

One thing has always annoyed me about the script tag. Script tags that reference external resources (via the src attribute) are no longer able to execute script embedded within the tag itself.

It doesn't make sense to me that we're forced to write:

[html]

var foo = use_some_lib();
foo.do.stuff();
[/html]

when this is so much more elegant:

[html]
[...]

38 Comments · Posted: August 26th, 2008 · Tags: html, javascript

Firebug 1.2 Released

The final version of Firebug 1.2 has been released. The release should be up on the Mozilla Add-ons site today, but it's also up on GetFirebug.com right now.

John J Barton and Jan Odvarko put a ton of work into this release (you may have noticed the rapid-fire series of beta releases last week - just [...]

43 Comments · Posted: August 25th, 2008 · Tags: firebug, mozilla

TraceMonkey

I've been waiting to blog about this for a long time now. A fantastic new improvement to Mozilla's JavaScript engine (SpiderMonkey) has landed. Code-named TraceMonkey this engine utilizes a techniques, called trace trees (PDF), which adds just-in-time native code compilation to SpiderMonkey.

A major goal of the project has been to set JavaScript up to compete [...]

68 Comments · Posted: August 22nd, 2008 · Tags: javascript, firefox, mozilla, tracemonkey

querySelectorAll in Firefox 3.1

A brand-new implementation of the Selectors API has landed in the latest Firefox nightlies (and in Firefox 3.1a1) - on track to head your way in the upcoming Firefox 3.1 release.

I've talked about this API before (1, 2) and while I do have some misgivings about the current API (which will be remedied in upcoming [...]

18 Comments · Posted: August 20th, 2008 · Tags: mozilla, javascript, jquery, selectors, firefox

Podcast #2, SXSW, Ninja Articles

Open Web Podcast #2

The second edition of the Open Web Podcast is now live. In this episode we brought on Brendan Eich and Arun Ranganathan (both of Mozilla) to discuss the recent changes that occurred in the ECMAScript 3.1/ECMAScript 4 processes that resulted in ECMAScript Harmony. This is a dense podcast - going just over [...]

8 Comments · Posted: August 15th, 2008 · Tags: book, podcast, sxsw

Object.getPrototypeOf

Historically one JavaScript property that's seen a lot of use (mostly due to its convenience) is that of __proto__. It's a quick-and-dirty way of accessing the original prototype property of the object's constructor function. For example, the following is true:

[js]"test".__proto__ === String.prototype

// Another alternative, not using __proto__
// Only works when constructor isn't changed
"test".constructor.prototype === String.prototype[/js]

This [...]

17 Comments · Posted: August 14th, 2008 · Tags: ecmascript, mozilla, javascript

ECMAScript Harmony

There's been some turmoil in the world of ECMAScript.

While many are - even, at least, vaguely - familiar with the development of ECMAScript 4 the devil is in the details. I've blogged about ES4 extensively in the past - and even did a speaking tour last fall educating developers about its details and implementations, however, [...]

56 Comments · Posted: August 13th, 2008 · Tags: ecmascript

border-image in Firefox

For the upcoming Firefox 3.1 release a lot of work has been going into improving its CSS support (specifically, in relation to the CSS 3 specification).

One areas that have received solid implementations is that of border-image. This is a new CSS 3 module that makes the exact slicing of images (and their positioning around an [...]

15 Comments · Posted: August 13th, 2008 · Tags: mozilla, css3, css, firefox