Subj : Re: Can SpiderMonkey do this?
To   : Bryan Ashby <bryanashby@hotmail.com>
From : Brendan Eich <brendan@meer.net>
Date : Thu Nov 20 2003 01:22 pm

Bryan Ashby wrote:

>- Common functionality, for example alert() will break the parser
>(JS_ExecuteScript() fails). I'm assuming I would have to "bridge" my
>own functionaly into the engine for these? So I'll have to write a
>complete up-to-browser-spec system for all of these common functions?
>  
>

Of course.  If you're running JS as if it were executing in a browser, 
you have to cope.  You won't be able to execute faithfully as if you had 
all the user's cookies, the current time of day, the output of 
Math.random, etc. -- in other words, stuff may leak through that 
executes differently for a given user, based on per-user state.  (Hmm, 
maybe you can see all the relevant cookies if you scan HTTP headers.)

>- Some code (without "external" function calls) seems to fail in the
>engine whereas it works fine in Mozilla (SpiderMonkey 1.5 BTW):
>function SomeThing(c) {
>var aArray = new Array(); 
>aArray["a"] = "A";
>return aArray[c];
>} // works fine in Mozilla but JS_ExecuteScript() fails?
>  
>

With what error report?  Are you showing the entire script that fails, 
or are you leaving out a call to SomeThing?

Are you developing on Windows using MSVC?  If so, please see 
http://www.mozilla.org/js/spidermonkey/release-notes/NOICF.html, 
recently posted in Phil's message to this group, at 
news://news.mozilla.org:119/bpdpjb$8r52@ripley.netscape.com.

>I guess more than just questions, I'm looking for suggestions here. Am
>I going about this all wrong? Can SpiderMonkey be used for what I am
>trying to do here? I'm open to any insight anyone can provide!
>

I am skeptical of the approach, unless you cache the "stripped" results 
for others to hit.  You'll be taking a big cycle hit emulated 
client-side JS, without 100% fidelity.

Is this supposed to be a transparent proxy that strips out annoyances 
for users of IE?  Make 'em upgrade to Firebird or Mozilla! ;-)  
Seriously, Opera has good annoyance controls, I hear, and I know Apple 
does.  So it seems to me you're going too many extra miles to help IE 
users, when those users should help themselves.

/be

.