[Dynapi-Dev] DynAPI3 beta release - few comments

[Joy R. <joy...@ho...>]

Hello,

I would like to make few notes about comming release of DynAPI3. I'm sorry 
for that I haven't gone trough DynAPI3 code so that I would know wheter 
these are allready taken count of. These are based on our experience and if 
any one of you have better knowledge if these issues, I would be happy to 
know about them.

1) There should be attention paid in to image size/sizing issues in DynAPI3. 
(At least in DynAPI2 there were several problems related in it.) Netscape 
6/7 and Opera browsers are able to find out image dimensions only after the 
whole document is loaded. There for DynAPI should employ mechanism which 
prevents image size queries before document is loaded on these browsers. 
Exspecially DynAPI core shouldn't rely on image dimensions before document 
is fully loaded.

2) The Javascript engine of Netscape is very slow on what comes to events. 
Special atention should be paid in to performance issues in Netscape 
browsers (more shortcuts / performance tweaks?). Exspecially dragging is a 
problem in Netscape. Jukka suggested that it might be good idea to consider 
different approaches to click events and drag events in Netscape (simplified 
drag module for Netscape?).

3) In Netscape 4 loading is the hardest issue. Fairly badly documented 
feature describes that Netscape 4 can have only one layer open for loading 
at the time. Other layers have to be closed before loading stuff in to other 
layer (note that Netscape doesn't close layer automaticly). If something is 
tried to load in to layer when other layer is open Netscape crashes. This 
suggests that some sort of loader is needed (based on our testes, in some 
browsers onLoad detection is not 100% acurate).

4) Opera 5 is very slooooooow... it may affect in to some script 
functionality.

5) Definition of looks should be made with styles when ever possible. Style 
definitions should be done based on DOM standard. Which means that widht 
equals in to width of content area. Borders are excluded from this width 
(this behavior differes from DynAPI2 approach). Following browsers use DOM 
standard in a way described earlier (others need to be fixed "manually" in 
dynapi): Opera from version 6 on, Netscape from version 6 on, MSIE from 
version 5 on machintosh platfom and MSIE from version 6 on PC platform. On 
MSIE6 on PC platfor ther is one catch though. MSIE6 uses DOM behavior only 
if there is correct doctype definition (=DOM) and link to correct standard 
in HTML file header. Otherwice it uses old aproach, where borders (for 
instance) are counted as part of widht. There for there should be (?) some 
sort of detection for doctype definition in DynAPI.

These are the issues, we think that should be dealt with DynAPI3 before 
betarelease if they aren't dealt allready. I think that we will be able to 
provide the results of browser compability tests (Excel files, we have 
tested all the objects and methods separately on each browser) shortly... I 
will let you know when we are ready with those.


- Juho Risku / Helmi Staff
  http://www.visualway.com/helmi

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