Some ECMAScript Technical Resources

January 28, 2011

This week I’ve been doing some analysis of the specification of object semantics in the current ECMAScript preparation.  This is in support of some new proposals and and  specifications that I’m writing for the next edition of ECMAScript. Some of this material may be useful for readers of the specification and in particular developers who [...]

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The Third Era of Computing

January 23, 2011

Most of us spend most of our time working on immediate problems. Designing a new site, adding a feature to an app, revising a specification, etc. We all need to focus on these short-term problems but sometimes it is useful to step back and look at the larger context within which we are working. Last [...]

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SPLASH – Write to Share

January 6, 2011

One of my goals as member of the Mozilla research team is to encourage more public sharing of innovative ideas that contribute to the open web.  One way that this sharing can occur is via conference papers. My last post announced the call for papers for the ACM SPLASH conference Wavefront program.  I want to [...]

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Make a SPLASH – Write a Paper

January 5, 2011

The ACM SPLASH Conference has published the call for papers for a new SPLASH program component called Wavefront that is focused on what I call “webish” computing.  To quote the CfP: The nature of computing is rapidly changing. Whether you label it ubiquitous, ambient, pervasive, social, mobile, web, cloud, or post-PC computing, it touches all [...]

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Extending the JavaScript Object Model

December 17, 2010

At the core of the JavaScript language is its “object model”. An object model defines the object abstraction of an language.  It tells users how to think about objects in a language — how are objects composed and what they can do.  It also tells language implementers what they must manifest as an object to [...]

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Announcing ECMAScript 5.1

December 15, 2010

The latest JavaScript language standard, ECMAScript 5, was approved by the Ecma International General Assembly one year ago.  Since then it has seen rapid adoption in new browsers releases. Once approved by Ecma, ES5 entered a process to become an ISO standard. That process should be completed in early 2011.  The ISO edition of the [...]

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An Information Hiding Proposal for ECMAScript

December 10, 2010

One of the goals for ECMAScript Harmony, the project to define the next versions of the JavaScript standard, is to make JavaScript a better language for writing complex application.  Better support for object-oriented encapsulation, information hiding, and abstraction should help JavaScript programmer deal with such applications. Today, I’m going to talk specifically about a proposal [...]

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Please, No Browser Monoculture

December 9, 2010

Dave Mandelin has a nice post responding to the Google V8 team’s new Crankshaft additions to their JavaScript engine.  Good reading, but all pretty much what you would expect in the currently highly competitive world of JavaScript implementations.  What really caught my attention was a comment by  RH Ryan that, in part,  said: Call me [...]

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Let’s Party Like It’s 1984 (for computing)

December 9, 2010

While I was at Microsoft I’d occasionally have chats with some of my colleagues about their next career steps.  Sometimes it was about whether they should stay at Microsoft or take a job somewhere else.  Other times, right after a major product release,  the question was whether they should stay and work on the next [...]

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Welcome!

November 27, 2010

I’m starting this blog as I join Mozilla. One of the things that attracted me to Mozilla was the opportunity to both work within a great organization and to freely express my own personal views on important topics.  This blog is going to be the one of the vehicles for that expression. I think we [...]

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