scripts

A JavaScript engine called IonMonkey, Mac Retina compatibility, and better touch support move into the new Firefox Beta, released today.

Firefox 18 Beta (download for Windows, Mac, and Linux) arrives with a new "just-in-time" JavaScript compiler called "IonMonkey" for faster site load times. While it doesn't appear to have been independently tested yet, Mozilla's own IonMonkey benchmarks from September indicate that it will make the stable version of Firefox 18 about 25 percent faster than the current Firefox 17. The features are expected to reach the Firefox stable channel around the first week of January. … Read more

In media, "preproduction" generally means drawing stuff: sketching out ideas on storyboards, whiteboards, legal pads, and even cocktail napkins. Greyfirst's Celtx is a free tool that finally brings preproduction into the same century as the media it creates, with some old-school touches, too. It includes Project Templates for planning and creating Film, Audio-Visual, Theatre, Audio Play, Storyboard, Comic Book, and Novel projects. Sample projects help get you started. Celtx integrates with free online and cloud-based resources and syncs with your mobile devices, so your creative projects are always available and safely stored online in the cloud, as … Read more

Google Chrome and Cirque du Soleil have partnered to show off the potential of the modern Web with an all-HTML5 Cirque performance that's unique to the Web, called Movi.Kanti.Revo.

The name comes from the Esperanto terms for moving, singing, and dreaming, according to the official Movi.Kanti.Revo Google announcement, and the experience does go to great lengths to create a dreamlike world on the Web. During different scenes of Movi .Kanti.Revo (pronounced MOOV-ee CANT-ee REEV-oh), you can interact with the site by moving your body or speaking to your computer. If that sounds a lot … Read more

Mozilla has begun building a new technology called IonMonkey into Firefox to improve its JavaScript performance.

High JavaScript performance is essential in today's hotly competitive browser market, because JavaScript is the language behind complicated Web sites and Web apps such as Google Docs and Facebook. IonMonkey has now been packaged into the "nightly" version of Firefox 18 for hardcore developers; that version is scheduled to become the mainstream version of the browser early in 2013.

IonMonkey is what's called a just-in-time compiler, or JIT for short. In olden days, JavaScript would run line by line in … Read more

Although speed is a major factor in browser choice, many people don't want to know why their favorite browser is fast -- they just care that it is. But the standards and tests used to determine how we measure a browser's speed can be varied, so Google has set out to further define the playing field.

This doesn't appear to be a case of the tech giant stomping all over open standards, though. Octane v1 is a revamp of Google's V8 benchmark and adds five tests to the eight current ones, the company said today in … Read more

If you edit HTML code on your Mac, you might find that Apple's text-handling programs like TextEdit may not suffice, especially since as a basic text editor it does not provide syntax-aware coloring, the option to collapse sections of code based on tags, and properly index lines of code. In addition, TextEdit relies on direct access to files from the Finder and cannot open remote files.

As a result of these limitations, alternative text-handling tools may be useful for managing HTML documents; one of the most popular is Bare Bones Software's TextWrangler (a free version of its powerful … Read more

European authorities who earlier cracked down on Microsoft's browser behavior are now are keeping an eye on its upcoming Windows RT operating system -- but they aren't saying yet whether they have any objections.

Mozilla last week criticized Microsoft's choice to deny browsers other than Internet Explorer privileges necessary to make what it sees as a competitive browser on Windows RT, the new version of the operating system for ARM processors. Specifically, IE gets access to deeper Win32 interfaces, but Firefox, other browsers, and any other third-party software only get access to the new and more limited WinRT interface. … Read more

Douglas Crockford, a power of the JavaScript world, has moved from Yahoo to PayPal.

Bill Scott, PayPal's senior director of user interface engineering, announced the new hire Saturday, and Crockford's Google+ page confirms the change.

Yahoo is losing only a single person among thousands of employees, but you can bet he's not one they like to see go. Crockford is a high-profile speaker in the tech world, a strong ally for the Yahoo User Interface (YUI) library of JavaScript tools, and a person who brings engineering cred.

Crockford is perhaps best known for an important role in … Read more

It's a good thing legal action is Mozilla's "last resort" for resolving its disagreement with Microsoft over bringing Firefox to the upcoming Windows RT, because it's likely a difficult antitrust case to make.

That's because Windows RT, the version of the operating system geared for devices using ARM processors, is a different beast than conventional Windows running on traditional x86 processors. Microsoft's present rules would hobble non-IE browsers on Windows RT, but the company's market power is with Windows on x86 chips.

ARM chips dominate today's smartphone and tablet devices running … Read more