Web Info & Tutorials

Erik Arvidsson lets us know about the JScript 5.7 patch that is zooming out to IE6 users:

The JScript 5.7 patch is now being pushed to an IE6 computer near you…

IE6 uses Jscript 5.6 which has some serious design flaws when it comes to garbage collections. This by itself prevented us from releasing Gmail 2 for IE6. After talking to the JScript team we (and others?) got them to realize that this is a critical flaw in Internet Explorer 6 and it is now being installed on all Windows computers (even those without a valid license). Expect Gmail 2 to work on an IE6 computer near you after a few more rounds of QA.

Robert Nyman has his eyes set on providing a JavaScript library that can hold it’s own against the major players. He just announced the release of DOMAssistant 2.5 with enhancements that he feels are on par with other libraries:

With this release of DOMAssistant, I feel that it can seriously compete with the major JavaScript libraries on the market. It has a very easy syntax to select or manipulate elements, and with the core functionality anyone needs, without having to worry about web browser differences, the compressed version with all modules included weighs in at a mere 6kb (Gzipped). If Gzipping isn’t an option for you, the compressed version lands at 21kb.

This release has a number of new features:

• Full CSS1-3 selector support
• New AJAX methods: load and get
• Enhanced performance and extra checks for memory leaks
• XPath Support
• DOMAssistant now creates its own scope to make use of private properties

Also, in terms of code quality Robert has taken the extra step to ensure that the whole library is JSLint validated.

The main purpose of DOMAssistant is to provide a solid foundation to build upon without all of the extras sometimes included in other libraries. As such, DOMAssistant focuses on:

• Element selection (through CSS selectors or enhanced methods).
• CSS handling (adding and removing CSS classes).
• Event handling (adding and removing events).
• Content manipulation (add or remove elements).
• AJAX interaction (getting content from other sources, and adding it to the document).
• DOM loaded (calling functions when the DOM is loaded, as opposed to the document with all dependencies).

While Robert certainly has a big task ahead of him to make up ground on libraries such as jQuery, Prototype or Ext, it seems he’s heading in the right direction and DOMAssistant may appeal to those folks looking for a convenient and lightweight method of using JavaScript without all of the extra fluff.

More information can be obtained about this release here.

John Resig has done some research on the state of ECMAScript 4 implementations:

I’ve just completed my first survey of the current ECMAScript 4 implementations. I went through and attempted to compile as many bugs and features as possible, as stated by the ECMAScript 4 specification and double-check them against all the actively-maintained implementations. You can view a nice overview below.

I think it’s fascinating to note that there’s 3 implementations that already have over 25% of all the new features in the language implemented.

And, there is an interesting note on Tamarin:

Might be worth mentioning that the Tamarin VM by itself doesn’t directly support ECMAScript source code. Rather, the subproject esc (written in ECMAScript 4) compiles ECMAScript 4 to abc bytecode that is run by the Tamarin VM. (And I imagine you know that already, but it might be an interesting detail for some visitors.)

Dimitri Glazkov has prefabricated a prevision that we power wager CSS Grid Positioning in IE 8. This would attain a aggregation of significance cod to the fact that:

• Alex Mogilevsky, and Markus Mielke, of Microsoft wrote the spec
• If Microsoft comes discover with a application that goes above and beyond, they power be healthy to intend disembarrass of the monkey on their back
• CSS grids are agonized correct now!

This power allows you to create a layout same this:

with:

It crapper be seen as a installation with 6 plumb lines and 2 flat lines.

We crapper ingest the installation lines to function the floating image

The evidence “float:page crowning right” here positions the ikon at the crowning correct crossway of the tender (as circumscribed in [CSS3GCPM])

“width:3gr” makes ikon 3 “grid units” wide, where a “grid unit” is the indifference between digit conterminous installation lines. Each bounds between a article and a notch automatically produces a installation line, thence to take “two columns, including the notch between columns, but not including some gaps right the columns” we crapper meet feature “3gr”.

You power wager more careful examples, with lots of gr’s (grid units).