MozillaZine

Mozilla Finishes First in ADC Mac Browser JavaScript Tests

Sunday February 23rd, 2003

Frank D writes: "Apple Developer Connection has posted the results of JavaScript tests among the six major browsers for the Mac (Safari, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, iCab, Opera, and Omniweb). The tests conclude that Mozilla has the best overall script handling, while Safari comes in second (and OmniWeb in last place)." Mozilla scored 'perfect support' in all tests except one involving moving a DHTML layer, where it had minor problems. Mozilla was the only browser able to successfully import an XML document and display its data within a HTML page.

#1 xmlimport test doesn't work on nightly

by wolruf

Sunday February 23rd, 2003 11:25 AM

just tried the Import XML test at http://developer.apple.com/internet/javascript/tests/import.html but it failed to generate anything using Mozilla 2003022304 on Win2k, anyone else has the issue ? JavaScript console shows:

Error: xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("apple")[0] has no properties Source File: http://developer.apple.com/internet/javascript/tests/import.html Line: 31

#2 Re: xmlimport test doesn't work on nightly

by bzbarsky

Sunday February 23rd, 2003 11:56 AM

xmlDoc is only defined inside the importXML() function scope but being used from a different function..... Not a smart course of action. ;)

#11 Re: Re: xmlimport test doesn't work on nightly

by james

Sunday February 23rd, 2003 8:06 PM

Aren't javascript variables global unless otherwise specified (with the "var" statement)? I don't think that would be the error.

#12 Re: Re: Re: xmlimport test doesn't work on nightly

by bzbarsky

Monday February 24th, 2003 12:58 AM

Hm.... that's a good point; I can't recall how exactly that's hacked in for backwards compat...

#15 Spot the error :)

by kunta

Monday February 24th, 2003 3:18 AM

Spot the error :)

alert('Your browser doesn't support this script'); return

This should be a combination of single and double quotes, that's why Mozilla fails, discovered it in 5 seconds by looking at the output of the javascript console. Should be:

alert("Your browser doesn't support this script"); return

#24 quoting

by james

Tuesday February 25th, 2003 1:58 AM

the actual javascript escapes the quote with a backslash. That error is only in the text version.

#13 Confirmed on Mozilla 1.2.1 Win98

by ElfQrin

Monday February 24th, 2003 2:54 AM

I experience the same error on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130 (thus *not* a nighly)

#27 Re: Confirmed on Mozilla 1.2.1 Win98

by MozSaidAloha

Thursday February 27th, 2003 11:22 PM

It doesn't work on Moz 1.2.1 Win XP Home. It works on MSIE 6.0 SP1 but fails on Opera 7.02.

#18 Re: xmlimport test doesn't work on nightly

by tibor

Monday February 24th, 2003 7:59 AM

It looks like their server's sending the wrong mime type. The apple.xml file that's being imported is identified as text/plain instead of text/xml.

If you save both import.html and apple.xml and then try the test locally it will pass since it's now loaded as text/xml. At least it did for me using "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130".

#26 Re: Re: xmlimport test doesn't work on nightly

by map_sort_map

Wednesday February 26th, 2003 9:38 AM

I don't know whether this makes a difference, but the apple.xml file is also missing the <?xml?> declaration.

#3 Phoenix works wih DHTML test

by belbo

Sunday February 23rd, 2003 1:48 PM

With the Phoenix Build 20030221 everything works as it should. Maybe this is Mozilla specific problem?

#4 Re: Phoenix works wih DHTML test

by boily

Sunday February 23rd, 2003 2:25 PM

Is Phoenix better than Mozilla?

#5 Re: Re: Phoenix works wih DHTML test

by bzbarsky

Sunday February 23rd, 2003 2:45 PM

Is an apple better than an orange?

#7 Re: Re: Phoenix works wih DHTML test

by AlexBishop

Sunday February 23rd, 2003 2:48 PM

"Is Phoenix better than Mozilla?"

If you mean in terms of support for JavaScript and DHTML, they should be pretty much identical.

Alex

#6 Re: Phoenix works wih DHTML test

by AlexBishop

Sunday February 23rd, 2003 2:47 PM

"With the Phoenix Build 20030221 everything works as it should. Maybe this is Mozilla specific problem?"

Unlikely. That said, I can't reproduce the scrollbar problem described with Mozilla 1.3 Beta (the test was conducted with 1.2.1).

Alex

#20 Re: Phoenix works wih DHTML test

by roc

Monday February 24th, 2003 10:28 AM

Yeah, I fixed this early in 1.3. We should be perfect on those tests now :-)

#9 Works with [newer] Mozilla builds

by czarandy

Sunday February 23rd, 2003 4:06 PM

I assume this problem was fixed sometime between 1.2.1 and 1.3b, since the author of the article is using the former, and IME the latter works perfectly. Any problems that Mozilla has with this would exist in Phoenix as well.

#8 Another nail in Safari's coffin :-)

by DeepFreeze3

Sunday February 23rd, 2003 3:45 PM

I wonder what Stevie has to say about this? Heh!! Heh!! GECKO RULES!! :-)

#10 Maybe

by googolplex

Sunday February 23rd, 2003 6:09 PM

Maybe you could take a more mature attitude. This is good news for gecko, but it doesn't mean Safari is awful.

Your attempts at being funny don't work either.

#17 Good result for Safari (and therefore KDE)

by tldcolli

Monday February 24th, 2003 6:21 AM

Safari coming second in this test is a very good result for such a new product. I say a very well earned Well Done! to all the KDE and Apple developers that made Safari possible!

#19 Re: Good result for Safari (and therefore KDE)

by asa

Monday February 24th, 2003 10:16 AM

"Safari coming second in this test is a very good result for such a new product."

Well, Safari may be new but the technologies they are using are anything but new. KHTML has been around for years and while I'm sure Apple's done a lot of work to get it working as well as it is today (especially, probably in the JS implementation,) it's certainly not "new". I think that I've seen KHTML development mailing list posts as old as 4 years and Konqueror (a shipping product based on those core technologies) has been going out to decent usersbase for at least a few years.

--Asa

#21 Re: Good result for Safari (and therefore KDE)

by roc

Monday February 24th, 2003 10:31 AM

how about the Mozilla developers whose code made it into Safari? :-) Yes, Safari uses some Mozilla code and ideas. This is a good thing. I wish we had more communication between KHTML and Mozilla...

#14 IE 6.0 SR-1 on Win98 works fine

by ElfQrin

Monday February 24th, 2003 3:00 AM

Although Mozilla is definitely a better browser than IE, tests on that site were performed with IE 5.2 for Mac.

I've tried the same tests with IE 6.0 SP1 on Win98 and all of them worked fine (there's not even the minor problem experienced with the "Moving a DHTML Layer" test).

#16 Re: IE 6.0 SR-1 on Win98 works fine

by bandido

Monday February 24th, 2003 5:54 AM

You missing the point. They were comparing Mac browsers, not Windows browsers, therefore IE 6 SP1 from Win98 is irrelevant to the discussion.

#22 Still an interesting data point

by mlippert

Monday February 24th, 2003 3:11 PM

Yes it was irrelevant to the discussion in the reference article, however, it is not irrelevant to this discussion about that article. I for one found it interesting and informative that IE 6 passed the JavaScript tests they used.

Thats not to say that I actually like or use IE (except when I *have* to, because of site inadequacies or because the site requires NTLM authorization). However, I am happy to hear that at least the latest Windows version has improved the standards compliance.

And we all know that it is likely that the mozilla problem will be fixed within a month, whereas a similar problem in IE (even the Windows version which gets far more love from MS than the Mac version) wouldn't be fixed for over a year, possibly longer.

#23 Already fixed

by the_Rebel

Monday February 24th, 2003 4:06 PM

"And we all know that it is likely that the mozilla problem will be fixed within a month,"

It was actually fixed already in the early 1.3 builds, but the tester was using an older version of Mozilla.

#25 So how come

by CrankyStan

Wednesday February 26th, 2003 2:15 AM

I still have to switch to IE to do my internet banking?