InScript

(Beta version 2000-12-07)

What is InScript?

InScript is the scripting language used by iCab to generate HTML documents dynamically. The core language is compatible with ECMAScript.

At present InScript features roughly the functionality of Netscape's JavaScript 1.1 or Microsoft's JScript and many extensions of newer versions.

A demo of the possibilities you'll find here.

Restrictions of the beta version

Warning: At the moment no security policy is implemented in InScript, i.e. every frame in one window can access all other frames in that window without any restrictions. Who considers this too dangerous has to switch off InScript in "Preferences - InScript".

The Document Object Model (DOM) is still missing some parts. Especially many W3C-DOM level 1standard objects are still missing.

Some scripts might cause problems because they require JavaScript 1.2 (or later), but fail to declare this in the SCRIPT tag.

Bugs

If iCab crashes on certain web pages, but it does not crash on these pages if InScript is turned off in the "Preferences", please report the URL to the iCab support.

Technical comments

InScript implements the 2nd edition of the ECMA-262 standard ("ECMAScript"). Therefore it has roughly all the features of JavaScript 1.1. It also features most of the 3rd edition of ECMAScript. But as ECMA262-3 is not supported completely yet, InScript only executes scripts with a LANGUAGE attribute of "JavaScript" and "JavaScript1.1".

Compared to newer versions of JavaScript the following parts of the language are missing:

regular expressions (they are currently ignored)
extended String and Array methods

As soon as ECMA262-3 has been implemented completely (which is roughly equivalent to JavaScript 1.5), DOM level 1 (and later on level 2) can be realized.

At the moment InScript implements properties defined by the DOM (mainly level 0) and some Navigator/Explorer extensions as follows:

Object	Properties
Event	altKey, clientX, clientY, ctrlKey, modifiers, pageX, pageY, screenX, screenY, shiftKey, srcElement, target, type
HTMLAnchorElement	(inherits from Link) charset, hreflang, rel, rev, text, type, x,y
HTMLAreaElement	(inherits from Link) alt, noHref
HTMLCollection	item, length
HTMLDocument	(inherits from HTMLElement) activeElement, alinkColor, anchors, applets, bgColor, body, charset, close, cookie, defaultCharset, domain, embeds, fgColor, getSelection, images, lastModified, linkColor, links, location, open, parentWindow, plugins, referrer, scripts, title, URL, vlinkColor, write, writeln
HTMLElement	all, className, dir, document, getAttribute, id, innerHTML, innerText, insertAdjacentHTML, insertAdjacentText, lang, length, name, outerHTML, outerText, parentElement, removeAttribute, setAttribute, sourceIndex, tagName, title
HTMLFormElement	(inherits from HTMLElement) acceptCharset, action, elements, encoding, enctype, method, reset, submit, target
HTMLImageElement	(inherits from HTMLElement) align, alt, border, complete, height, hspace, isMap, longDesc, lowsrc, lowSrc, src, useMap, vspace, width
HTMLInputElement	(inherits from HTMLElement) blur, click, disabled, focus, form, select, type, value (Checkbox and Radio elements: checked, defaultChecked)
HTMLOptionElement	(inherits from HTMLInputElement) defaultSelected, index, selected, text
HTMLScriptElement	(inherits from HTMLElement) charset, defer, event, htmlFor, src, text, type
HTMLSelectElement	(inherits from HTMLInputElement) multiple, options, selectedIndex, size, value, options.selectedIndex
Image	complete, height, src, width
Link (internal)	(inherits from HTMLElement) coords, hash, host, hostname, href, pathname, port, protocol, search, shape, target
Option	defaultSelected, index, selected, text, value
Window	alert, back, blur, clearInterval, clearTimeout, clientInformation, close, closed, confirm, debug, defaultStatus, Event, event, focus, forward, frames, history, home, length, location, moveBy, moveTo, name, navigate, navigator, open, opener, parent, print, prompt, resizeBy, resizeTo, screen, ScriptEngine, ScriptEngineBuildVersion, ScriptEngineMajorVersion, ScriptEngineMinorVersion, scroll, scrollBy, scrollTo, self, setInterval, setTimeout, status, stop, top

A list of known and fixed bugs you'll find here.

More links on JavaScript you'll find here.

Version history

iCab Pre 2.3

New objects: Event, RegExp
HTMLInputElement: click, select
nested functions and function expressions
HTMLDocument, Window: captureEvents, releaseEvents, routeEvent, handleEvent (still not functional; the latter two can also be found in HTMLElement)
regular expressions are currently ignored, but do not terminate the script any more
window.onerror
window.Event, window.event
element event handlers can be defined from script source code
event handlers are passed an "event" argument

iCab Pre 2.2

New objects: Option, Error, EvalError, RangeError, ReferenceError, SyntaxError, TypeError, URIError, HTMLScriptElement
HTMLElement: className, dir
HTMLFormElement: enctype, acceptCharset
HTMLInputElement: disabled
HTMLSelectElement: multiple, size und value
Document: scripts
Global: undefined
Window: back, forward, home, print stop
Labelled Statements, break label, continue label
infinite recursions do stack checking
Operators in and instanceof
try/catch/finally/throw
Runtime errors are thrown as exceptions

iCab Pre 2.1a

HTMLDocument: activeElement, body
HTMLDocument: execCommand, queryCommandEnabled, queryCommandSupported (these functions always return false)
Window: toString

iCab Pre 2.1

New objects: HTMLImageElement, Image
HTMLDocument: alinkColor, bgColor, charset, defaultCharset, fgColor, linkColor, parentWindow, vlinkColor
Link: toString
String.prototype: replace, slice
Window: debug
Array and object literals
switch/case/default
Operators === and !==
document.open returns a reference to document

iCab Pre 2.0

New objects: HTMLAnchorElement, HTMLAreaElement
HTMLCollection: item; furthermore, MSIE's function-style access to collections is supported
HTMLDocument: domain, getSelection
HTMLElement: document, getAttribute, id, innerHTML, innerText, insertAdjacentHTML, insertAdjacentText, lang, outerHTML, outerText, parentElement, removeAttribute, setAttribute, sourceIndex, title
HTMLFormElement: action, encoding, method, target
HTMLInputElement: form
HTMLSelectElement.options.selectedIndex
Checkbox- and Radio elements have the properties checked and defaultChecked
Function.arity (equals Function.length) and Function.arguments
String literals may reach over more than one line if the line break is preceeded by a back slash ("¥")
String.prototype.substr
global functions ScriptEngineMajorVersion and ScriptEngineMinorVersion

iCab Pre 1.9a

New objects: HTMLCollection, HTMLDocument, HTMLElement, HTMLFormElement, HTMLInputElement, HTMLOptionElement, HTMLSelectElement
Document: anchors, applets, close, embeds, images, links, open, plugins
Window: blur, close, focus, open, opener, moveBy, moveTo, navigate, resizeBy, resizeTo, scroll, scrollBy, scrollTo
"javascript:"-URLs may return a result string.
You can access the characters of a string like an array (with a numerical index).
Event handlers are executed in DOM context.
do .. while

iCab Pre 1.9

First public InScript beta version.