SUCCESS!

Got it to work. There is now a native JSIO object in Firefox. Sweetness.

Native Object

I added my own custom JSIO native object to the Firefox codebase. It is an object called JSIO and can run the sqrt method from the Math class. Compilation was successful. However, when I try to launch the newly compiled Firefox, it runs the other version on my computer.

When reading the startup script, I noticed that if the script cannot find the correct startup file in its directory, it looks for other versions of it on the disk. So there must be a problem there. I am in the process of tracking it down.

Spring Break

I was on a cruise to Mexico for the last week so I wasn't able to get any work done.

Compiler Flashback

Still in the process of tracing where in the Firefox code the JavaScript gets turned into C. I have gotten to the JavaScript parser and identified the correct token for the "Math" object. Just need to keep following from there.

More design

I have stubbed out the JavaScriptIO object with pseudo code for the necessary methods. Layed out the way I want the object to function at the user level. Continued refinement of all aspects. I also determined that the "handler" object must be of type nsIDOMEventHandler. More research is required on the specifics of this object (mozilla's page is light on documentation).

I have also been reviewing my old code from Operating Systems that read IO from a PS3 controller. I'm starting to piece together the way this will be wired.

Design

I started the high-level design work last week. This included mapping out what functions would be needed, including short descriptions of their purpose, parameters, and return values. I am in the process of transferring this preliminary design from scratch paper to an electric copy. More refinement will be taking place during this process. Along with heavily borrowing from the structure of XMLHttpRequest.

Not much progress has been made since then. I have been getting a lot done on my 402 project and not really focusing on this. No worries though, JavaScriptIOn's time shall come!

Decisions

I have decided that I will be creating the extension for the Firefox web browser. This is because I feel that Firefox has a larger community and because it has been around for a longer period of time, there is a greater chance that people will be able to answer my questions.

So from here I need to start the actual design of what the prototypes will do. In order to do this, I need to make sure that I have a thorough understanding of the I/O process in the browser. Hopefully I cant find source code to aid in this endeavor.