Sep 29
JavaScript and DOM compatibility
2005 at 03.13 am posted by Veerle Pieters
JavaScript has long been a second class citizen on Mac but thanks to the arrival of Mac OS X a lot has changed. It seems that the use of advanced JavaScript techniques on the web have been reborn thanks to web apps like 37 Signals Backpack for example.
I’m not a fan of using buzz words but hey we are talking about Web 2.0, AJAX or DHTML here ;-) It seems like ages ago but in 1997 I’ve won a Macromedia DHTML award for our company site Woohoo! ;-) But let’s get serious now and talk about the great work the web team at Apple is doing in making Safari a top notch browser. So what about JavaScript and DOM compatibility in WebKit?
The team did some testing against a number of test suites, including the JavaScript test suite from Mozilla and several DOM test suites from the W3C. They are also working to support nonstandard “DOM Level 0” features and Firefox and Mozilla quirks. Good news is that they’re making a lot of progress on the standards stuff too.
So let’s look at the latest cvs version of WebKit:
JavaScript
| Mozilla JavaScript tests | 1111 total | 1018 passed | 91.63% success |
DOM (in HTML pages)
| DOM Level 1 Core (html) | 238 total | 226 passed | 95.0% success |
| DOM Level 2 Core (html) | 11 total (*1) | 11 passed | 100% success |
| DOM Level 2 Events (html) | 26 total | 26 passed | 100% success |
| DOM Level 2 HTML (html) | 685 total | 680 passed | 99.3% success |
DOM (in XHTML pages)
| DOM Level 1 Core | 238 total | 212 passed | 89.1% success |
| DOM Level 2 Core | 11 total (*1) | 7 passed | 63.8% success |
| DOM Level 2 Events (xhtml) | 26 total | 26 passed | 100% success |
| DOM Level 2 HTML (xhtml) | 687 total | 597 passed | 86.9% success |
| DOM Level 3 Core (xhtml) (*2) | 708 total | 78 passed | 11.0% success |
The above section applies only to XHTML pages served with an XHTML mime type. This doesn’t apply to most XHTML pages on the web today. The team is looking at improving future support to make XHTML and XML work really well in the WebKit engine.
*1. A lot of the DOM Level 2 Core tests are not available in HTML standalone versions yet - we’re working with the W3 Consorium’s QA working group on this.
*2. DOM Level 3 support is completely experimental - They haven’t really made a full-on attempt to work on it yet. (Source: Safari weblog)
So not bad to see the team still very commited in their work for making the Mac platform a great tool for development.
3served
1
I just read this article feed in adactio’s (jeremy keith) feeds page. An inredible example of what AJAX/Web2.0/DHTML/xmlhttprequest can do for a guy. or girl.
Then i clicked through and read the rest here. Amazing. I’m thrilled. Bought his book DOMScripting. Anxious to learn it!
btw, great site, tutes, articles, etc.! Thanks!
2
D’oh!!! What are you talking about, girl?!?
3
It’s about time that people started making the web more than a static site (besides flash). I really hope new technology pushes ajax & other scripting to new limits. Maybe someday we can goto a website and it will be like using a whole new operating system....