JägerMonkey, ES5, DevTools, HTML5 dance off, Web Made Movies, Firefox 4, and more…
In this issue…
- JägerMonkey in Firefox 4
- Error Console turned off by default
- A Minute (or so) with Brendan Eich
- New ES5 strict mode support
- Restore Previous Session feature
- Flash vs HTML5 dance off
- Web Made Movies hack day!
- Firefox 4 and a virtual park
- JS benchmarks
- Thunderbird L10n contact wanted
- Software releases
- Upcoming events
- Developer calendar
- About about:mozilla
JägerMonkey in Firefox 4
Firefox just got a whole lot faster. “JägerMonkey is our new optimizing JIT compiler for JavaScript. It sits underneath our existing JIT, TraceMonkey, which appeared in Firefox 3.5. TraceMonkey’s job is to optimize loops to very fast machine code. However, not all code has loops, and not all loops can be trace compiled. JägerMonkey is a general-purpose compiler which converts entire methods to machine code. The goal is to get great baseline performance. When it detects a loop that can be traced, it automatically engages the trace compiler, which makes it even faster. Yes, that’s right: there’s a turbo button inside.” For more about JägerMonkey, check out David Anderson’s blog post.
Error Console turned off by default
The Developer Tools team has disabled both the Inspector and the Error Console in Firefox 4 nightlies, but they can be reenabled through the about:config page by setting devtools.inspector.enabled and devtools.errorconsole.enabled to “true”. A browser restart will be required in order for the changes to take effect. Read more at Rob Campbell’s weblog.
A Minute (or so) with Brendan Eich
Chris Williams (aka: @voodootikigod) recently started a project called “A Minute With Brendan,” a short weekly audio show during which Brendan Eich provides you with, “lightning fast updates of what is upcoming and exciting in the world of JS and programming at large. Super hot morsels of juicy geekery to infuse your day with excitement and thought!” The clips aren’t actually a minute long (the most recent clocks in at around 7 minutes), but they’re densely packed and a lot of fun.
This week’s episode: “Almost 7 minutes of awesome ES5 strict mode discussion about what strict mode is and why you should be avoiding it when using file concatenation on JavaScript. If you know what you are doing, you should use it, otherwise it would be wise to take jslint.com’s recommendations with this episode’s grain of salt. Enjoy!”
New ES5 strict mode support
Jeff Walden has posted another ES5 update, this time about the new ES5 strict mode support. He summarizes, “Don’t try to use the arguments or caller properties of functions created in strict mode code. Don’t try to use the callee or caller properties of arguments objects corresponding to invocations of functions in strict mode code. Don’t try to use the caller property of a function if it might be called from strict mode code.” Jeff’s full post has much more information and all the details you need.
Restore Previous Session feature
A new “Restore Previous Session” feature has been added to the latest Firefox 4 nightly builds. Paul O’Shannessy writes, “this means that you no longer have to restore your whole session immediately at start up. This will be available through a menu item in the History menu.”
Flash vs HTML5 dance off
David Humphrey has blogged about a recent HTML5 challenge. “A week or so ago, Jonas Flint threw down a little web UI challenge, daring the open web to build a button as cool and sexy as his Flash-based button.” Al MacDonald, using the most recent Firefox Beta, responded with style and panache. See the live demo (if you’re using Firefox 4 betas), or the video.
Web Made Movies hack day!
The Web Made Movies team has announced an upcoming hack day that will be held on October 3rd, alongside the Open Video Conference in New York. “The Web Made Movies hack day is a chance for filmmakers, developers and anyone interested in creating Open Video to turn the inspiration of the OVC into action. It’s a great opportunity to meet with people who can help you explore the potential of HTML5. We’ll be featuring a series of short talks and presentations that will spark your imagination and have you leaving the OVC weekend with some concrete next steps to apply to your future work.” If you’re interested in taking part, see Brett Gaylor’s announcement and be sure to sign up.
Firefox 4 and a virtual park
“As new betas of Firefox 4 come out and the community gets ready for the next release, we are also putting together a new Mozilla Parks page,” writes David Boswell. “This will be for Tumucumaque National Park, located in Brazil. As we’ve done with earlier parks, we’ll talk about how Mozilla is protecting the digital ecosystem just like a park protects a physical ecosystem. Instead of just talking about this, we also want to let people help us build a virtual version of the park with images, videos, tweets and more.” The virtual park will use some of the latest HTML5 magic and will be a fun way to feature some of the new advances in the web platform.
JS benchmarks
Robert Sayre has posted an update about Firefox JavaScript performance, looking at the latest benchmark scores and diving deeper into what those benchmarks actually measure. “Contributors to the Mozilla JS engine are making performance improvements throughout the Firefox 4 development cycle, and the progress has been pretty rapid. We’re excited about the speed improvements we’ve already made for Firefox 4, and even more excited about those yet to come.” Read more at Robert’s weblog.
Thunderbird L10n contact wanted
The Thunderbird team is looking for a new L10n contact as the current contact (Simon) has decided to step back from the project. “We are looking for a new localisation contact/coordinator volunteer for Thunderbird. Simon has already listed some of the regular activities that he has been doing. We would very much like to find someone to help us improve Thunderbird for all languages across the world. The most important skills are a passion to help Thunderbird, a willingness to learn new tools and techniques, and strong communication skills.” If you’re interested in helping out with Thunderbird localisation efforts, contact Mark Banner.
Software releases
* RequireJS 0.13.0
* Firebug 1.7a2
* Firebug Lite 1.3.1
Upcoming events
* Sep 25-26, Berlin, JSConf.eu 2010
* Oct 1-2, New York, Open Video Conference
* Oct 28-29, Toronto, FSOSS
* Nov 3-5, Barcelona, Drumbeat Festival 2010
* Nov 5-7, Gothenburg, FSCONS
Developer calendar
For an up-to-date list of the coming week’s Mozilla project meetings and events, please see the Mozilla Community Calendar wiki page. Notes from previous meetings are linked to through the Calendar as well.
About about:mozilla
about:mozilla is by, for and about the Mozilla community, focusing on major news items related to all aspects of the Mozilla Project. The newsletter is written by Deb Richardson and is published every Tuesday morning.
If you have any news, announcements, events, or software releases you would like to have included in our next issue, please send them to: about-mozilla[at]mozilla.com.
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14 Sep 2010 deb comments off
