[Edbrowse-dev] [Bug#647226: edbrowse: button press does not...

[Edbrowse-dev] [Bug#647226: edbrowse: button press does not...

[Karl Dahlke]

This is not a complete answer or resolution, but a point for discussion.
Often javascript (in edbrowse) comes to a halt
because the DOM I have implemented is incomplete,
and an object or attribute is missing.
You can see this with db3.
It will say something like
foo.bar.bas is not defined.
And then it stops.
Sometimes you can turn javascript off and press the button,
but sometimes that doesn't work either.

Here is what has confused me from the start.
How to make javascript march on even if something is undefined.
Why does it just stop?
If it marched on it just might do the right thing.

This is the same engine used by firefox, and I can't believe
its DOM is so perfect and complete that it never
runs into an undefined variable on any website.
It must, and when it does I imagine it marches on.
How does it do that?
I never found a setting or button to make this happen.

This is something we need to look into
if edbrowse is to work on a wider range of websites.
Yes we can and should improve the DOM, but beyond this,
the execution of javascript, which is Mozilla and somewhat out of our control,
needs to be more fault tolerant.

Karl Dahlke

Re: [Edbrowse-dev] [Bug#647226: edbrowse: button press does not...

[Chris Brannon]

Karl Dahlke <eklhad@comcast.net> writes:

> Here is what has confused me from the start.
> How to make javascript march on even if something is undefined.

The problem with just blindly marching on is that errors can cascade.
Have you ever seen a shell script fail because one of its component
commands is undefined?  It just keeps trudging.  Sometimes, it can get
pretty ugly, as failure begets failure.  This is one of the numerous things
I dislike about shell scripting.
Your point is a good one, though, and it bares investigating.  Maybe the
best approach is to go digging around in the firefox source.  That's a
scary prospect, though.

-- Chris