ECMAScript 5 support in Mozilla
Table of contents
ECMAScript 5, the latest standard upon which JavaScript is based, is in Final Candidate stage (as of May 26, 2009). The JavaScript runtime used in Mozilla projects including both Firefox and Thunderbird is already in the process of integrating support for ECMAScript 5 features. This article covers the features already supported in the Mozilla JavaScript runtime, and will provide some insights as to the roadmap for further integration of ECMAScript 5 features.
Features already supported
Added in JavaScript 1.8.1 (Gecko 1.9.1)
JavaScript 1.8.1 adds support for native JSON, which is compatible with ECMAScript 5.
JavaScript 1.8.1 supports the Object.getPrototypeOf() method.
The String.trim() method, which trims whitespace from both ends of the string, is also now supported in JavaScript 1.8.1.
Improvements laid out by ECMAScript 5 have been made in the parsing algorithm that prevents evaluating XHTML as JavaScript code in certain circumstances.
Gecko 1.9.1.4 updated the implementation of JSON.stringify() to be compliant with ECMAScript 5.
Added in JavaScript 1.6 (Gecko 1.8)
Array extras -- added methods offering several improved methods for manipulating arrays -- have been part of JavaScript since JavaScript 1.6. Now they've been standardized as part of ECMAScript 5.
See also
- ECMAScript web site
- ECMAScript 5 specification
- John Resig's post on Object.getPrototypeOf
- Michael J. Ryan's implementation of ECMAScript5 Dates in JavaScript
Page last modified 04:09, 22 Jan 2010 by Sheppy
