monkeymonkey writes "Mozilla has integrated tracing optimization into SpiderMonkey, the JavaScript interpreter in Firefox. This improvement has boosted JavaScript performance by a factor of 20 to 40 in certain contexts. Ars Technica interviewed Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich (the original creator of JavaScript) and Mozilla's vice president of engineering, Mike Shaver. They say that tracing optimization will 'take JavaScript performance into the next tier' and 'get people thinking about JavaScript as a more general-purpose language.' The eventual goal is to make JavaScript run as fast as C code. Ars reports: 'Mozilla is leveraging an impressive new optimization technique to bring a big performance boost to the Firefox JavaScript engine. ...They aim to improve execution speed so that it is comparable to that of native code. This will redefine the boundaries of client-side performance and enable the development of a whole new generation of more computationally-intensive web applications.' Mozilla has also published a video that demonstrates the performance difference." An anonymous reader contributes links the blogs of Eich and Shaver, where they have some further benchmarks.
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That's great... except for the fact that javascript (& javascript in combination w/ IFRAMES) attacks abound online, AND, have been the MAJORITY OF ATTACK MECHANISMS USED for the past 3-4 yrs. now, no less...

IMO @ least? Well, I'll let you read it, over @ /.:

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl...1&cid=24720215

Synopsis/I.E.-> What NEEDS doing, is a more security oriented & secured javascript VM... because THEN? You'll "need more speed" due to security on VM's probably going to 'slow it down' even more!

(E.G.-> & if you've ever surfed a site MINUS running Javascript/Java/ActiveX etc. et al? You note a HUGE boost off the bat in page loads, period... especially via cutoffs of adbanners alone (of which adbanners have been compromised MANY times the past 3-5 yrs. online))

Thus - To prevent these types of shenanigans in both webbrowsers AND HTML oriented mails? Javascript ITSELF has to be more secured, rather than merely only 'sped up'...

APK

P.S.=> Somehow, I also do NOT think they'll be successful in making javascript (an interpreter driven language afaik) as fast as say, statically linked "stand-alone" executable C code (one of the fastest there is, when NOT driven by interpreter libs & this IS possible using it to build code)... too much "messagepassing" overheads is why... STILL, the 'speed boost' is nice, but, what about security for Javascript?? That IS the important one imo @ least... apk