Firefox 3.1 will run many Web-based applications such as Gmail faster through incorporation of a feature called TraceMonkey that dramatically speeds up programs written in JavaScript, Mozilla said Friday.
JavaScript has been very broadly used to add pizzazz or flexibility to Web pages over the years, but in recent years, it's also become the plumbing for many rich Internet applications. However, because JavaScript has been hobbled by pokey performance, Web-based applications often struggled to work as responsively as "native" software running directly on PCs, and programmers writing Web applications have often turned to other options, such as Adobe Systems' Flash and Flex.
Now Mozilla hopes to change the balance of power in JavaScript's favor.
"TraceMonkey is a project to bring native code speed to JavaScript," said Mike Shaver, Mozilla's interim vice president of engineering, adding that JavaScript performance nearly doubles compared to Firefox 3.0, based on the SunSpider test of JavaScript performance. That speeds up many basic tasks, but it also brings image editing and 3D graphics into JavaScript's abilities, he said.
TraceMonkey is what's called a just-in-time compiler, one type of technology that solves the problem of converting programs written by humans into instructions a computer can understand.
Most software that runs on people's computers is already compiled in advance into what's called a binary file, but JavaScript usually is interpreted line by line as it runs, a slower process. "We're getting close to the end of what you can do with an interpreter," Shaver said.
A just-in-time compiler, though, creates that binary file on the fly as the code arrives--when a person visits a new Web page, and the browser encounters JavaScript, for example.
http://www.download.com/8301-2007_4-10023723-12.html
JavaScript has been very broadly used to add pizzazz or flexibility to Web pages over the years, but in recent years, it's also become the plumbing for many rich Internet applications. However, because JavaScript has been hobbled by pokey performance, Web-based applications often struggled to work as responsively as "native" software running directly on PCs, and programmers writing Web applications have often turned to other options, such as Adobe Systems' Flash and Flex.
Now Mozilla hopes to change the balance of power in JavaScript's favor.
"TraceMonkey is a project to bring native code speed to JavaScript," said Mike Shaver, Mozilla's interim vice president of engineering, adding that JavaScript performance nearly doubles compared to Firefox 3.0, based on the SunSpider test of JavaScript performance. That speeds up many basic tasks, but it also brings image editing and 3D graphics into JavaScript's abilities, he said.
TraceMonkey is what's called a just-in-time compiler, one type of technology that solves the problem of converting programs written by humans into instructions a computer can understand.
Most software that runs on people's computers is already compiled in advance into what's called a binary file, but JavaScript usually is interpreted line by line as it runs, a slower process. "We're getting close to the end of what you can do with an interpreter," Shaver said.
A just-in-time compiler, though, creates that binary file on the fly as the code arrives--when a person visits a new Web page, and the browser encounters JavaScript, for example.
http://www.download.com/8301-2007_4-10023723-12.html
