300594 - JavaScript is not parsed when language="jscript" or type="text/jscript"

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: DOM: HTML Parser, defect)

Description

[Rotem Liss]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.9) Gecko/20050711 Firefox/1.0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.9) Gecko/20050711 Firefox/1.0.5

Some web developers may know about the standard, but not about the fact there
are other browsers than IE (for example, Firefox). I was one of them a year ago.
And they may use <script language="jscript"> or <script type="text/jscript">,
for they think the language is actually JScript (which is right in IE, and they
don't know there are other browsers).

For all of these things, I think Gecko should parse the scripts marked as
<script language="jscript"> or <script type="text/jscript"> as normal JavaScript
scripts.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Actual Results:  
JavaScript not parsed.

Expected Results:  
JavaScript parsed as normal.

Comment 1

[Rotem Liss]

Attachment: Testcase

Comment 2

[Rotem Liss]

The testcase should alert "JavaScript Parsing", as it does in IE.

Please note it does not mean to support JScript - just to parse it as normal.

Maybe it should be only in Quirks Mode...

Comment 3

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

Use of jscript can be used to provide automatic "browser detection". While
supporting jscript might fix some pages, it might also break others. Unless you
can give statistics on the gain (loss) of such a change, I would recommend
wontfix. You can use <http://bclary.com/2004/07/10/mozilla-spiders> to obtain
statistics on a significant population (>~ 5000) of pages (both top tier as well
as others).

Comment 4

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

This is WONTFIX for several reasons:

- The one Bob gave, that some pages want to use proprietary extensions to
JScript and the MSIE DOM, so use language="JScript" or equivalent to hide script
from non-IE browsers.

- It's a bad idea to prop up a 9+ year old MS variation on a de-facto standard,
when there's a widely known and used standard.  This goes backward without any
win that unambiguously makes up for the loss.

- Even if we thought that 51% of the pages explicitly selecting JScript would
work in Firefox etc., the 49% that would break would be a thorn in our side
forcing yet more JScript/MSIE compatibility.  That's a slippery slope down the
trailing edge of browser evolution, if I may mix metaphors slightly.  We play to
win on the leading edge, where we have asymmetric advantages over the enemy. 
This is not such a place.

/be