Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : Java, Web

ECMAScript Candidate Specification Published

Peter Galli — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:50:00 GMT

The candidate specification of the ECMAScript language standard - known as ECMA-262, was published on April 9.

ECMAScript is the scripting language used to create web pages with dynamic behavior, and is more commonly known as JavaScript. It is a component of every web browser and is an essential aspect of interoperability.

The ECMAScript standard is "one of the core standards that enable the existence of interoperable web applications on the World Wide Web," Ecma International, which develops standards for Information and Communication Technology, said in a media release.

This candidate specification, the PDF of which is available here, will now undergo interoperability and web compatibility testing, and will likely be submitted to the Ecma General Assembly for ratification as an Ecma standard before the end of 2009.

ECMA is inviting technical experts to review this candidate specification and submit feedback here by July 15, 2009.

This latest revision of ECMA-262 will now be known as ECMAScript, Fifth Edition and not under the previous working name ECMAScript 3.1.

The Fifth Edition codifies de facto interpretations of the language specification that have become common among browser implementations and adds support for new features, ECMA said.

The ECMAScript, Fifth Edition candidate specification has been developed by Ecma TC39, whose membership includes all major browser vendors.

These members will now create and test implementations of the candidate specification to verify its correctness and the feasibility of creating interoperable implementations and for web compatibility testing to ensure that the revised specification remains compatible with existing web applications.

TC39 members Opera, Mozilla, and Microsoft have each committed to participating in this testing process, which should be finished by the middle of July, and that a final draft of the specification can be agreed upon in September for submission to the Ecma General Assembly for final approval in December 2009.

ECMA also expects this to result in a fast-track submission to ISO/IEC JTC 1 for revision of ISO/IEC 16262.

"We expect the Fifth Edition to benefit all web developers by helping improve browser interoperability and making enhanced scripting features broadly available," said Allen Wirfs-Brock, Microsoft's ECMAScript architect. Read more about all this on Microsoft's JScript team blog.

The last major revision of the ECMAScript standard was the Third Edition, published in 1999 and work on future ECMAScript editions continues as part of the ECMAScript Harmony project.

Web Sandbox Source Now Available Under Apache License 2.0

Peter Galli — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:48:00 GMT

Microsoft has released more source code under an OSI-approved license: this time it has made the source code for the Web Sandbox runtime available under the Apache 2.0 open source license.

The Web Sandbox project explores how to advance the web platform to improve security, isolation, quality of service and extensibility capabilities for web developers and website users.

More information on the licensing details, as well as comprehensive documentation for experimenting and integrating with the Web Sandbox, can be found here.

But, while developers are being encouraged to help define and refine the Web Sandbox, it is not recommended for those developers creating production sites as it is still under development.

The Web Sandbox was created in response to limitations found in the current web platform, and is designed to explore potential solutions. Having a more secure and robust architecture as a foundational building block will help drive the next wave of Web innovation.

The Sandbox is a framework that works on most modern browsers that support the"ECMA-262, 3^rd Edition" (JavaScript) standard, and provides the same features in all modern web browsers. No browser add-ons or changes are required to leverage this technology. Beyond security, the Web Sandbox normalizes the different browsers and provides consistent W3C DOM support.

Since the initial release of Web Sandbox at PDC 2008, the team has received a lot of useful feedback from the web security community, and has also been collaborating with a number of customers, partners and the standards communities, all of whom want to adopt the technology when it is ready.

The goal? An open and interoperable standard that will help foster interoperability with complementary technologies like script frameworks and drive widespread adoption of the Web Sandbox.

This move is good news for Microsoft and the open source communities. But, it is important to note that while an Apache license is being used, the Web Sandbox project is not an Apache Software Foundation project and is not sponsored or endorsed by the ASF.

Microsoft does, however, already have an active relationship with the ASF. In fact, last year the company announced it had become a sponsor of the ASF so as to help enable the Foundation pay administrators and other support staff so that its developers can focus on writing great software.

Sam Ramji, the senior Director of Platform Strategy at Microsoft, also delivered a keynote address at ApacheCon in New Orleans last November.

Microsoft's Interoperability Technical Strategy Team already participates as a code contributor to the Apache Stonehenge incubator project; the company has also contributed a patch to ADOdb, a popular data access layer for PHP used by many applications and which is licensed under the LGPL and BSD; while Microsoft's Powerset team contributes to HBase, an open-source, column-oriented, distributed database written in Java.

Python, Java, Ruby, Oh My! Silverlight Alpha 1.1 ships with Dynamic Language Support

MichaelF — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:45:00 GMT

Mix 07 kicked off today with keynotes from Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie. Amongst announcements regarding media and Silverlight Scott Guthrie announced the release of a cross-platform version of the .NET framework within Silverlight Alpha 1.1. Included is a Dynamic Language Runtime that allows developers to use languages such as Python, Java and Ruby to program in Silverlight.

I could drone on about this but we decided to go sit down with two of the individuals who contributed to this effort: Jim Hugunin and John Lam instead. Jim, who we interviewed before, gives us some insight into this announcement including some information about new MS-PL releases to Codeplex tied to this announcement (Hint: IronPython 2.0).

Later today, we will post the second interview with John Lam.

Video: Python, Java, Ruby, Oh My! Silverlight Alpha 1.1 ships with Dynamic Language Sup

Java and .NET Interoperability: JNBridge

MichaelF — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 20:57:00 GMT

Update: We thought we would try our videos on YouTube...would love to hear feedback on this implementation.
Sam interviews Wayne Citrin to discuss work his company, JNBridge, has done to provide interoperability between .NET and Java.

Wayne Citrin is the CTO at JNBridge. He is the architect of JNBridgePro, and has been engrossed in Java and .NET interop issues since .NET's beta days. Previously, Wayne was a leading researcher in programming languages and compilers, and was on the Computer Engineering faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He was a researcher at IBM's research lab in Zürich, Switzerland, and has a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in Computer Science.

The JNBridge blog can be found here.

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