In IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari, the character sequence <!-- in
javascript is a line comment, i.e. equivalent to //. ECMA 262 didn't
define this. AFAICT ES4 doesn't define it, either. Many pages on the Web
rely on this, so browsers cannot remove it for existing content.
Note that HTML cannot fix this, because <!-- is used in external js files
in the wild, and HTML doesn't have a look-in there.
I note that this behavior is incompatible with E4X, where <!-- would be
the start of an XML comment object. Unless I'm mistaken Firefox handles
this incompatibility with the ;e4x=1 switch...
Also, it seems that Firefox and Safari sometimes treat --> as a line
Is this something that can be specced in ES4? Or is the intent to require
UAs to have a switch such that they can disable the <!-- treatment for ES4
scripts, and keep it for legacy scripts? (If the latter, ES3 still needs
an update if this is going to be specced at all...)
In IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari, the character sequence <!-- in
javascript is a line comment, i.e. equivalent to //. ECMA 262 didn't
define this. AFAICT ES4 doesn't define it, either. *Many* pages on the Web
rely on this, so browsers cannot remove it for existing content.
Note that HTML cannot fix this, because <!-- is used in external js files
in the wild, and HTML doesn't have a look-in there.
I note that this behavior is incompatible with E4X, where <!-- would be
the start of an XML comment object. Unless I'm mistaken Firefox handles
this incompatibility with the ;e4x=1 switch...
Also, it seems that Firefox and Safari sometimes treat --> as a line
comment, too, but that IE and Opera don't.
Some demos:
http://tc.labs.opera.com/ecmascript/html-comments/
Is this something that can be specced in ES4? Or is the intent to require
UAs to have a switch such that they can disable the <!-- treatment for ES4
scripts, and keep it for legacy scripts? (If the latter, ES3 still needs
an update if this is going to be specced at all...)
Cheers,
--
Simon Pieters
Opera Software
In IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari, the character sequence <!-- in
javascript is a line comment, i.e. equivalent to //. ECMA 262 didn't
define this. AFAICT ES4 doesn't define it, either. Many pages on the Web
rely on this, so browsers cannot remove it for existing content.
Note that HTML cannot fix this, because <!-- is used in external js files
in the wild, and HTML doesn't have a look-in there.
I note that this behavior is incompatible with E4X, where <!-- would be
the start of an XML comment object. Unless I'm mistaken Firefox handles
this incompatibility with the ;e4x=1 switch...
Also, it seems that Firefox and Safari sometimes treat --> as a line
comment, too, but that IE and Opera don't.
Some demos:
Is this something that can be specced in ES4? Or is the intent to require
UAs to have a switch such that they can disable the <!-- treatment for ES4
scripts, and keep it for legacy scripts? (If the latter, ES3 still needs
an update if this is going to be specced at all...)
In IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari, the character sequence <!-- in javascript is a line comment, i.e. equivalent to //. ECMA 262 didn't define this. AFAICT ES4 doesn't define it, either. *Many* pages on the Web rely on this, so browsers cannot remove it for existing content. Note that HTML cannot fix this, because <!-- is used in external js files in the wild, and HTML doesn't have a look-in there. I note that this behavior is incompatible with E4X, where <!-- would be the start of an XML comment object. Unless I'm mistaken Firefox handles this incompatibility with the ;e4x=1 switch... Also, it seems that Firefox and Safari sometimes treat --> as a line comment, too, but that IE and Opera don't. Some demos: http://tc.labs.opera.com/ecmascript/html-comments/ Is this something that can be specced in ES4? Or is the intent to require UAs to have a switch such that they can disable the <!-- treatment for ES4 scripts, and keep it for legacy scripts? (If the latter, ES3 still needs an update if this is going to be specced at all...) Cheers, -- Simon Pieters Opera Software