Portable apps and Javascript

[The Magpie]

The portable versions of Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird for use with
USB drives seems like a great idea and one I could make a helluva lot of
use of at work - but before I drive down that particular road, does
anyone know how good / bad / indifferent the implementation of
Javascript is on these apps?

For anyone else who might find them interesting, by the way, they are
all found at the site http://portableapps.com/

 

[bwucke]

The Magpie napisal(a):

The portable versions of Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird for use with
USB drives seems like a great idea and one I could make a helluva lot of
use of at work - but before I drive down that particular road, does
anyone know how good / bad / indifferent the implementation of
Javascript is on these apps?

About as good as the apps themselves. The underlying binaries in C and
C++ just provide basic framework, js compilers, XML renderers etc, and
are basically the same across all these apps. The difference lies in
GUI written in XUL (an XML variant designed for drawing GUIs) and
Javascript which handles great most of user functions of the interface.
Basically, Firefox is a web browser written in javascript, running on
top of Gecko, XPCom and some other components that make the framework.
So is Thunderbird etc etc. Almost all the extensions (including huge
ones, like Chatzilla, editor etc) are written in Javascript. The
javascript there is powerful, fast, reliable and extended FAR beyond
what the language specs say, what may or may not be an advantage.

 

[The Magpie]

The Magpie napisal(a):


About as good as the apps themselves. The underlying binaries in C and
C++ just provide basic framework, js compilers, XML renderers etc, and
are basically the same across all these apps. The difference lies in
GUI written in XUL (an XML variant designed for drawing GUIs) and
Javascript which handles great most of user functions of the interface.
Basically, Firefox is a web browser written in javascript, running on
top of Gecko, XPCom and some other components that make the framework.
So is Thunderbird etc etc. Almost all the extensions (including huge
ones, like Chatzilla, editor etc) are written in Javascript. The
javascript there is powerful, fast, reliable and extended FAR beyond
what the language specs say, what may or may not be an advantage.

Thanks for the info - I immediately set them up and tried out the
portable Firefox and am hooked! It is truly fantastic and does
everything I could want, plus I can carry it around with me complete
with bookmarks, my javascript "linklets" (what *do* you call little
chunks of javascript set up as a "bookmark"?) and even passwords if I
wanted to. Which I don't, obviously, and which happens to be the only
bit of it so far that concerns me. Even my selected Themes and
Extensions work perfectly!

 

[bwucke]

The Magpie napisal(a):

with bookmarks, my javascript "linklets" (what *do* you call little
chunks of javascript set up as a "bookmark"?)

Bookmarklets. That's a common name and there's quite a few out there.
Google for them.