When Internet Exporer 8 was released, a much talked-about feature was mutable DOM prototypes. I dug in this morning to figure out exactly what is and is not supported. As one would expect, the support is not as full as the nice writeup would have everyone believe. Here’s a quick summary: The Node type doesn’t... […]

I decided to dig into Google Chrome this weekend to see what sort of hidden gems were lurking just beneath the surface. I ended up with a deep exploration into how the browser handles dialogs (alert, prompt, and confirm) as well as popup windows and discovered some pretty interesting things. First, Chrome has this interesting... […]

It’s taken me a bit, but I’ve finally coverted my blog over to use WordPress. Since I started this blog almost 8 years ago, I’ve managed it on a custom-written content management system. I wrote everything from scratch including the database schema, spam precautions, and tagging system. This past month, I finally reached the point... […]

It hasn’t been a secret that I hate ECMAScript 4. Well, to be more precise, I hate it as an evolution of JavaScript on the web; on its own, I think it’s an interesting and unique language. In writing my next book, I even came away with a certain appreciation for how it tips its... […]

It’s been an incredibly busy year with work and writing, so I’ve purposely kept speaking engagements to a minimum. I will, however, be speaking at two events coming up: The Rich Web Experience – West: September 8-10. I’m going to have four sessions at RWE (details at the site), so I’ll be running around like... […]

I was looking through one of the source files of Narcissus, the JavaScript interpreter written in JavaScript, when I came across a line that I probably missed before: var keywords = {__proto__: null}; The __proto__ property is only accessible in Firefox, Safari, Rhino, and ActionScript and is the property that ties an object instance to... […]

I was over my buddy Adam‘s place for a fourth of July barbecue yesterday when he mentioned having read a Microsoft whitepaper on cross-domain security. This had come up after we had started talking about Internet Explorer 8 and if there’s anything new and cool in it. He then mentioned offhand that they quoted me... […]

Regardless of the recession or not argument, the fact is that a lot of people are feeling financially crunched. Pretty much any place you may have put your money isn’t safe. Housing prices have plummetted, stocks have taken a pounding, and interest rates in savings accounts are practically non-existent. Compounding the problem is the 3.9%... […]

On my recent trip back to my ancestral home of Boston, I was invited to speak at a high school. The topic was what it takes to work for a company like Yahoo!. Given that this was a group of teenagers, and the propensity of such groups to fall asleep when the lights are turned... […]

I met Jackie somewhere around 10 years ago. She was in high school and I was in college. To be honest, I can’t remember why we started talking but I do remember us instantly getting along. Maybe it was our no-BS way of talking about anything and everything. It’s sometimes difficult to be friends with... […]