Subj : Re: Sharing Javascript objects between different XUL windows.
To   : Peter Wilson
From : Brendan Eich
Date : Wed Dec 22 2004 10:10 pm

Peter Wilson wrote:
> I am writing an editor which presents a view of a DOM object. In another 
> tool window I cache a map of tree elements to the source nodes in the 
> original DOM object.
> The intention is that when a user selects a tree element in the tool I 
> can map it back into the original DOM node using the Map.
> 
> It seems that when I switch focus away from the tool back to the main 
> window all the objects in the map are quietly converted to different 
> object. When I later retrieve (by id) objects from the cache the 
> returned object is not === to the original DOM node. Otherwise it has 
> all the properties of the expected node (it is not == either).
> 
> Anyone got any ides what is going on? This technique used to work 
> several years ago when I first wrote this code.
> 
> Any other pointers to sharing objects between windows?

Are you using JavaScript only, or C++ and the DOM APIs (or even the C 
SpiderMonkey JS Engine API)?

What other objects does a given DOM node turn into? Another DOM object, 
or an arbitrary object?

If you're using the C API and failing to protect referenced objects from 
being GC'd, that might explain things -- but I'd expect you to see 
crashes too.

/be

.