Re: FLASH: OT: JS in iCab (Was... iCab Redux or a New Great Mac Hope)

[Frederico]

On 2/7/00 7:07 PM, Eric Dunham via

brokencorridor [dot] net

, said:


>Do any of you Mac gurus (Frederico?) know what kind of object hierarchy is

>used in the iCab JS stuff (ie. does it support objects like document.all,

>document.layers or some other layer hierarchy...)? I'm just wondering,

>well... because it's my job :) Any pointers to online documentation, etc.

>would be extremely helpful.


Hi Eric,


Nothing online that I could find either; might be a few days before 

online docs catch up with bundled.


We were pleased to find that Flash movies play flawlessly, LoadMovie 

functions perfectly, etc, but a lot of our JS isn't yet supported, so 

we'll just keep crossing our fingers that development keeps this peppy 

pace.


I haven't even looked at this browser since p1.6 or so; it's come a long, 

long way. It's light (1.2MB), snappy, customizeable, stable, and 

downright anorexic in terms of RAM required (a whopping 4MB alocation 

runs just fine, even with plugins), and, perhaps best of all, handles 

Java via the Apple MRJ 2.2, which finally makes Web-based Java pretty 

useable. It even handles a number of beta plugins that otherwise kill IE 

and NN.


I know Stacy is willing to masquerade as NN or IE to get at the Flash, 

but I think this isn't a great idea, especially at our older Flash sites, 

because so much JS is subtle and you might never know what you're 

missing. We were too vain a couple years back in much of our design, and 

said "to hell" with people who turn off JS, though now we work hard to 

sniff them out. I've already been to a handful of sites where none of the 

imbedded functions work, and if I didn't know about the JS issue and had 

seen these sites before, I might not have even known that I wasn't seeing 

everything.


>From what I've seen so far, I think you can count on the next preview 

version handling JS 1.2 just fine, and the final release in June should 

prove to be pretty spiffy.


If you've got access to a Mac, I highly recommend giving this thing a 

once-over, especially if you were a CyberDog fan. Now is the time to give 

your input; the builders are quite responsive to wishlists withthis 

thing, and it's coded so smartly as to accept addons and enhancments 

without a major rewrite.


Anyway,


>From the ReadMe:


€  InScript (iCab's implementation of JavaScript/ECMAScript) can now 

switched on. But don't expect too much, the JavaScript implementation is 

not yet finished. Most parts of the DOM (Document Object Model), that 

means the possibility for a script to access all the HTML elements,  are 

still missing. So some JavaScript based pages will work, but most won't.

This is why InScript is still switched off by default. We recommend to 

keep it switched off unless you know HTML and JavaScript very well.


In the iCab archive you'll find a JavaScript example which shows what's 

already working. 


>From the Example:

Technical comments


InScript implements the 2nd edition of the ECMA-262 standard 

("ECMAScript"). Therefore it has roughly all the features of JavaScript 

1.1. 


Compared to newer versions of JavaScript the following parts of the 

language are missing: 



€	nested functions 

€	function, array and object literals 

€	switch / case / default 

€	do .. while 

€	export / import 

€	labels for break label and continue label 

€	regular expressions 


As soon as DOM level 0 has been implemented sufficiently, InScript will 

be extended to the upcoming ECMAScript standard (3rd edition), which 

corresponds to JavaScript 1.5. After that, DOM level 1 (and later on 

level 2) can be realized. 


At the moment InScript implements properties defined by the DOM and some 

Navigator/Explorer extensions as follows: 

Object

Properties

Window

alert, clearInterval, clearTimeout, clientInformation, closed, confirm, 

defaultStatus, frames, history, length, location, name, navigator, 

parent, prompt, screen, self, setInterval, setTimeout, status, top 

Document

cookie, lastModified, location, referrer, title, URL, write, writeln 

"global"

ScriptEngine, ScriptEngineBuildVersion 


Most of the event handlers should work, but they are not executed using a 

DOM context yet, but rather the global context only. 


More links on JavaScript you'll find here. 

(<http://www.snailshell.de/NBP/javascript.html>)


+++




Frederico



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