As you may or may not have seen, over the weekend I released a new version of my DLRScript project. It’s coming along. It adds 3 things: File loading via the src attribute, better exception reporting for DLRJScript(it shows you what line of script code failed), and improved DLRJScript performance.
File Loading
I could probably write a bunch on this (and probably should in another article). Basically I am dynamically loading content (script files) from the server. I also extended HTML a bit in that you can now use the same script tag to load a script from the server and to write additional code that will load after the script has loaded. It looks like this:
1: <script type="DLRJScript" src="/somefile-on-the-server.js"> 1:
2: function doSomething()
3: { 4: // Code found here
5: }
</script>
JS Performance
Because of the new way I am creating the JScript engine, I get JScript code to compile, so the code that executes is faster than standard interpreted Client-Side JavaScript. I did a simple test which is within my project over on CodePlex. The test simply adds 15 <hr /> elements to a hidden div. It records the time before and after the routine. First run in the DLRJScript results in about the same speed as standard client=side JavaScript. The second run results takes about 1/2 the time and the third trip is even faster (the 4th-6th attempt takes about the same amount of time as the 3rd run, so I figure that’s as fast as it gets). I’m not sure if this implies that the DLR optimizes code even more after subsequent runs of code or not (I know the .NET spec supposedly will optimize code after it has been run a few times).
Anyway, my test is not scientific in case you are wonder. There could be additional processes on my box that may make the results vary. Everything is a very crude approximation. I did run the client-side version several times to see as well with about the same results.
The Future
Ok, my plan is to get my DLRJScript to be more compatible with standard client-side JavaScript using DOM2. Right now I know I’m not even at DOM1 spec. I will be testing various libraries to see if I can get them to run with my implementation. It may result in a faster way to run JavaScript in the browser. Also, since the code is really running within the SilverLight plugin, the script code should be standardized and run the same in every browser (well, at least in theory).
Print | posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 2:33 PM