Archived open Web documentation

Obsolete
This feature is obsolete. Although it may still work in some browsers, its use is discouraged since it could be removed at any time. Try to avoid using it.

The documentation listed below is archived, obsolete material about open Web topics.

Browser Detection and Cross Browser Support

Improper browser detection can lead to web maintenance nightmares. Rethinking the basics of when and how to detect user agents is crucial to creating maintainable, cross browser web content. This article reviews several approaches to browser detection, their usefulness in specific circumstances to arrive at a common sense approach to browser detection.

Displaying notifications (deprecated)

Firefox offers support for "desktop notifications"; these are notifications that are displayed to the user outside the context of the web content, using the standard notification system provided by the operating system.

E4X

ECMAScript for XML (E4X) is a programming language extension that adds native XML support to JavaScript. It does this by providing access to the XML document in a form that feels natural for ECMAScript programmers. The goal is to provide an alternative, simpler syntax for accessing XML documents than via DOM interfaces. A valid alternative to E4X is a non-native JXON algorithm.

E4X Tutorial

This tutorial walks you through the basic syntax of E4X (EcmaScript for XML). With E4X, programmers can manipulate an XML document with a syntax more familiar to JavaScript programming.

LiveConnect

(Please update or remove as needed.)

MSX Emulator (jsMSX)

Old Proxy API

Proxies are objects for which the programmer has to define the semantics in JavaScript. The default object semantics are implemented in the JavaScript engine, often written in lower-level languages like C++. Proxies let the programmer define most of the behavior of an object in JavaScript. They are said to provide a meta-programming API.

Properly Using CSS and JavaScript in XHTML Documents

XHTML™ 1.0 The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (Second Edition) defines XHTML to be a reformulation of HTML 4 as an XML 1.0 application.

Scope Cheatsheet

JavaScript with Mozilla extensions has both function-scoped vars and block-scoped lets. Along with hoisting and dynamic behavior, scope in JavaScript is sometimes surprising.

Server-Side JavaScript

Here's a radical idea: Use one language to write entire Web apps -- the same language which billions of web pages already use, every day.

Sharp variables in JavaScript

A sharp variable is a syntax in object initializers that allows serialization of objects that have cyclic references or multiple references to the same object.

Standards-Compliant Authoring Tools

Creating cross-browser code upfront will save you lots of time quality testing your web content. The following authoring tools adhere to the W3 standards. If you're using older versions of tools that rely on old browser bugs or generate browser-specific code, it may be time to upgrade:

Window.importDialog()

Because opening windows on mobile isn't necessarily appropriate, the Firefox Mobile team designed the importDialog() method to replace window.openDialog(). Instead of opening a new window, it merges the specified XUL dialog into the main window.

Writing JavaScript for XHTML

In practise, very few XHTML documents are served over the Web with the correct MIME media type, application/xhtml+xml. Whilst authored to the stricter rules of XML, they are sent with the media type for HTML (text/html). The receiving browser considers the content to be HTML, and does not utilise its XML parser.

XForms

XForms were envisioned as the future of online forms as envisioned by the W3C. Drawing on other W3C standards like XML Schema, XPath, and XML Events, XForms tried to address some of the limitations of the current HTML forms model. However, XForms never gained traction and is now considered obsolete.