Talk:JavaScript

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the JavaScript article. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject.
Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Ask questions, get answers.	Be polite Assume good faith No personal attacks Be welcoming	Article policies No original research Neutral point of view Verifiability

	To-do list for JavaScript:	edit  · history  · watch  · refresh
Useful URLs to use for further work [1] and Inheritance through Prototypes

/Archive 1: Dec 2001 - Jun 2005

/Archive 2: Jun 2005 - Aug 2006

Contents 1 Javascript a JVM language? 2 Security risks 3 JScript in WSH 4 Actionscript 5 Refs section 6 History and overly fast archiving 7 Unclear sentence about "PnP JavaScript design pattern" 8 Run-on sentence

[edit] Javascript a JVM language?

Javascript is categorized as a JVM programming language, but i don't see any reference to it. Either this is a mistake and should be corrected or a reference should be made somewhere. Who can help? Bouke 15:37, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Security risks

The following attack does not use any error, exploit or backdoor. Should wikipedia include this kind of information? What about this specific case where it is not a flaw but something inherent to the way javascript works?

From: http://www.spidynamics.com/spilabs/education/articles/JS-portscan.html

Imagine visiting a blog on a social site or checking your email on a portal like Yahoo’s Webmail. While you are reading the Web page JavaScript code is downloaded and executed by your Web browser. It scans your entire home network, detects and determines your Linksys router model number, and then sends commands to the router to turn on wireless networking and turn off all encryption. Now imagine that this happens to 1 million people across the United States in less than 24 hours. This scenario is no longer one of fiction.

The fact that JavaScript is involved in much security-related discussion seems worth mentioning in wikipedia. The particular example is only one of many. Wikipedia, and this article, do not seem to me the right place to hold a detailed discussion of such risks, and I'm not sure it can be properly understood without that. Likewise, public discussion of vulnerabilities is most clearly appropriate when it's done in a way that encourages and facilitates their repair; in this case, given the unreasonability of expecting general users to follow the discussion, a browser-vendor security forum seems more appropriate. Jackrepenning 23:01, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] JScript in WSH

I think some mention of the use of JScript in Windows Scripting Host should be made. One can effectively write full-blown application using JScript. -SharkD 13:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Actionscript

Along with some copy editing, I changed the reference to ActionScript. It obviously does conform to the ECMAscript standard, otherwise Mozilla wouldn't have adopted the ActionScript VM code the other day. Chris Cunningham 01:12, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Refs section

This seems indiscriminate. These should be moved into ref tags if directly relevant to the article. Chris Cunningham 14:58, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History and overly fast archiving

Looking back at the history section of the Archive1 one sees that the issues brought up there are still not taken care of.

To expand on this, the sentence As of 2006, the latest version of the language is JavaScript 1.7 makes for even more confusion whre there is a web page dedicated to Javascript 2.0. Something to clarify versions, relations to Ecmascript versions and dates would be helpful. I have looked but am sufficiently confused by what is claimed that I am not in a position to contrubute.

Just please don't archive this before it is solved. --17:37, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

That link is an old Netscape proposal that hasn't been updated in years. The latest available version of JS is 1.7. The correspondence between JS and ECMAScript versions is described at the ECMAScript page. --asqueella 16:25, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unclear sentence about "PnP JavaScript design pattern"

I removed the following sentence from the article because it seemed to lack sufficient context to make clear what was meant.

PnP JavaScript design pattern was adopted gradually after commonly use of Ajax to reduce JavaScript maintenance cost.

What is a "PnP JavaScript design pattern"? And, if we are going to say it was adopted, we need a source. 75.214.198.187 (really User:JesseW/not logged in) 04:34, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Run-on sentence

The sentence:

Since JavaScript is interpreted, loosely-typed, and, when run at the client-side, may be hosted in varying environments, applications, implementations and versions, the programmer has to take extra care to make sure the code executes as expected in as wide a range of circumstances as possible, and that functionality degrades nicely when it does not.

Is way too long and unclear. It needs to be broken up into pieces, and simplified. I attempted to do so, but couldn't get it to work. I came up with: "JavaScript has a number of features that make it Because the same JavaScript code may be run in a large variety of circumstances, extra care must be taken in testing it.", but that leaves out too much of what's in the original. Suggestions are greatly appreciated. 75.214.198.187 (really User:JesseW/not logged in) 04:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

How about:

JavaScript is an interpreted and loosely-typed programming language. JavaScript code is also often passed to web browsers and other web 'user agents' to be run at the client-side, and so will be interpreted in varying environments, applications, implementations and versions on various end users' machines. This means that the programmer has to take extra care to ensure that the code executes as expected in as wide a range of circumstances as possible. There will always be the possibility of total failure in the final execution environment, so it falls to the software designer to ensure that the end user's perceived functionality degrades nicely in those cases too.

I'm afraid the reason it wasn't clear was because it was rather terse, probably to try to make it all work as one massive sentence. When clarified, it gets longer, not shorter: but if that makes it more helpful to the reader, then it is not a problem. What do people think? --Nigelj 23:58, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

That's certainly an improvement, and I suggest you replace the existing sentence with that. Nevertheless, it's not optimal... It'd be better if there was a clear topic sentence; maybe "The same JavaScript code is often run in a wide range of circumstances, due to the language's dynamic features and it's typical client-side execution." followed by what you wrote. Thanks for your suggestion! 75.214.202.6 (really User:JesseW/not logged in) 06:51, 11 February 2007 (UTC)