Steps Toward Creating Compatible ECMAScript 5 Implementations

re: Steps Toward Creating Compatible ECMAScript 5 Implementations

John A. Bilicki III — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:51:44 GMT

IE9 Goals in order of priority...

1.) Work on JScript to get it on par with Gecko 1.9.0 and Presto 2.0, performance isn't everything, the ability to code something with less code is. In example things like importNode are absolutely critical.

2.) XHTML! I know there are other things that need to be put in place, but we're not willing to wait for standards to be implemented ten years after they debut.

3.) CSS3 selectors...but more importantly properties. We know border-radius is going to make the cut but multi-column layouts, border-image, and multiple-background-image support are also high demand items. You guys don't have to go nuts with CSS3 support and proprietary implementations with -ms- property prefix is more then welcomed even by hard-core standards enthusiasts. We know that not all standards are finished and could change...but we would rather adjust this via conditional comments in the future (entirely reliable) then have absolutely no way to support whatsoever.

4.) Customizable GUI...yet it seems you folks have decided static counter-intuitive is the way to go. Time to stop asking developers who simply code and ask designers who know how people in the real world interact with things.

IE8 (in regards to IE) was a solid respectable release. Cover all four of these important points and IE will really become desirable to work with instead of having to "deal with" like IE6. Things like Acid3 are nice and all but they don't automatically represent what the most dire needs to be fulfilled by browser vendors for web designers (and web developers outsourced to do web design.

Oh and one more point...

5.) Stop calling web designers web developers! If you work on serverside code you're a web developer, clientside a web designer, Flash/SilverLight a graphic designer...and someone can be a mix of any or all, but the terms themselves are not interchangeable.

Looking forward to the silence on IE9 being broken in the coming months. Good luck to your team with everything.

re: Steps Toward Creating Compatible ECMAScript 5 Implementations

Nathan L Smith — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:19:23 GMT

John (from the comment above),

Most of what you point out has nothing to do with JScript or the ECMAScript language itself, so I don't think it's really appropriate here.

As far as web developer/designer and the server v. client distinction, it seems very silly if you've ever developed any substantial client-side code.

Anyway, Allen and the JScript team, excellent work on starting this testing effort. It's very important and it's great to see Microsoft is making a solid effort in adopting ES5.

re: Steps Toward Creating Compatible ECMAScript 5 Implementations

Nathan L Smith — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:19:30 GMT

John (from the comment above),

Most of what you point out has nothing to do with JScript or the ECMAScript language itself, so I don't think it's really appropriate here.

As far as web developer/designer and the server v. client distinction, it seems very silly if you've ever developed any substantial client-side code.

Anyway, Allen and the JScript team, excellent work on starting this testing effort. It's very important and it's great to see Microsoft is making a solid effort in adopting ES5.

re: Steps Toward Creating Compatible ECMAScript 5 Implementations

Richard of Tally — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:15:29 GMT

@John

<snip>

Stop calling web designers web developers! If you work on serverside code you're a web developer, clientside a web designer, Flash/SilverLight a graphic designer...and someone can be a mix of any or all, but the terms themselves are not interchangeable.

</snip>

REALLY??? I mean I've actually spent a great deal of time working on both the client and server, I have to respectfully disagree. When I'm writing network connectivity "drivers" for the browser, or Object containers, I'm no web designer, I'm crunching data. Web designers IMO make layouts, images, flow couture and probably 1k other things I don't even know about :-). One is not below the other, but I just perceive one to be more quantitative/science and the other art/science, I can honestly say.. I'm no web designer :)

re: Steps Toward Creating Compatible ECMAScript 5 Implementations

Will Peavy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:27:53 GMT

@John Bilicki - "clientside a web designer" - so someone who hacks ECMAScript all day long is a designer?

re: Steps Toward Creating Compatible ECMAScript 5 Implementations

John A. Bilicki III — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:25:08 GMT

@Richard of Tally Good point and I was unaware of such a position, good to know. Would you then consider yourself a clientside developer or something else?

@Nathan L Smith, I would say with substantial experience with both clientside and serverside that I feel there is still a clear distinction. Individually I'm sure it's subjective to how each of us would refer to ourselves, the code we each do, and how we refer to the positions we fill...though I would argue for standardizing position names to better differentiate between people with two different capabilities.

@Will Peavy Hopefully ECMAScript hacking won't be an issue...if the IE team releases IE9 for XP with the suspected greatly updated version of JScript (granted there is subjectivity from numerous positions in numerous debates) it would certainly make the slice of JavaScript 1.5 only browsers (essentially IE 6,7,8) disappear even if people stick with XP for a few years...otherwise if the IE team does not at least release IE9 for XP we could be facing some instrumental headaches in XP/IE support even with the work accomplished in IE8 over the next few years with people who's computers have not outright failed (e.g. blown PSU) which would force them (if lacking the presence of a technical person) to buy a new system.

Again I'm very excited about hearing more about IE9 and especially the JScript improvements. :-)

re: Steps Toward Creating Compatible ECMAScript 5 Implementations

FremyCompany — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:59:48 GMT

@JScript Team (Allen & others) :

1] Could we expect a fully compilant IE8.5/IE9 (regarding the ES3.1/ES5 spec) ?

2] Does that mean that you're working on a "new" JScript interpereter/compiler/virtual machine ?

3] Will JScript.NET be updated too ? For DotNet 4 or will this take more time ?

4] Could I (and other benevol developpers) get a preview of the new JScript engine (when it will be available) before the release of IE9 Beta to test it and point out problems or things you (could) make faster ? (Ok, I presume No by default, but who doesn't try have no change to get what he hopes)

re: Steps Toward Creating Compatible ECMAScript 5 Implementations

GauravS — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:39:48 GMT

@FremyCompany: We haven't finalized plans for the next version of our JavaScript engine, but have a strong interest in seeing it support ES5 and on getting some kind of preview into the hands of interested developers. As we know more, we'll keep folks updated through this blog. As for Jscript.NET, we're still talking about what we want to do with it.

re: Steps Toward Creating Compatible ECMAScript 5 Implementations

FremyCompany — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:23:08 GMT

Ok, I'll stay tuned.

Even if many work have been done with JScript for IE8, many work is still to be done (IE8 is the less ES5-compilant browser regarding to your set of ES5-tests about new major changes from ES3; IE8 is the slowest browser on JScript performance tests (SunSpeeder & others), ...)

You've got a great challenge and a lot of things to explore : hard but funny work [;)]

re: Steps Toward Creating Compatible ECMAScript 5 Implementations

vikramark — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:45:02 GMT

The test suite is only useful to test the browser’s compliance or can the end user’s application javascripts could also be tested through these tests? It will be great to have a TestSuite or tool, that can parse through all the javascript code used by end user applications and be able to find some potential issues (if any) when we migrate towards ECMAScript5.

re: Steps Toward Creating Compatible ECMAScript 5 Implementations

FremyCompany — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:09:03 GMT

Theorically, it should not change anything to normal JScript use. They have added new features and clarified some border-edge cases, but you don't need to modify your scripts to make them ES5-compilant.

re: Steps Toward Creating Compatible ECMAScript 5 Implementations

Andreas — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:16:19 GMT

A testsuite makes realy sense! Good work... but....

please apply professional javascript coding practices (don't pollute the global namespace, use something like jsDoc, ...)!