We use the window.name property to persist data across pages. We rarely have a problem with this except when other components that we’re using also use window.name for storage. Fortunately we have tricks to help with this. What we haven’t seen before was a bug inside the TeaLeaf JavaScript code, which accidentally created a local variable in the global scope. A common mistake.  A bit surprising, coming from the likes of TeaLeaf but common nonetheless.

This (approximated) one line of code inside Tealeaf has been causing us problems in Mozilla:

Tealeaf.somerandomfunction = function() {
name = “bla”;
}


So they’ve created a variable here, but accidentally in the global scope.

Now open Firefox and try this:

1. Load a random web page (google.com or something)
2. Open firebug
3. Type “window.name = ‘apple’;”
4. Refresh the page
5. Type “window.name” (see “apple”)

Works as expected, right? Now, try this:

1. Load random web page and open firebug
2. Type “window.name = ‘apple’;”
3. Type “name = ‘orange’;”
4. Type “window.name” (see “orange”)
5. Type “window.name = ‘Pear’;”
6. Refresh the page
7. Type “window.name” (see ‘apple’)

Note that the issue is not merely that they have leaked their local variable into the global scope, but that it seems to obliterate the reference to the DOM extension window.name (which still exists, but with no references to it). Even if we access window.name directly now, we are reading and writing to the new expando property. Thus, when we go to the next page, we are left with the original value we first wrote to window.name

To solve this, every time you want to use window.name you should do this first:

delete(name);

I raise this question because of recent events that occurred in rapid succession. They were as follows:

1. Ann Coulter, an ultra-conservative pundit, and author was recently slated to speak at the University of Ottawa. Just before she arrived, a student representative of the university (Francois Houle) wrote her, warning that in Canada we wouldn’t put up with hate speech and that she should generally tone it down if she wanted to avoid arrest. So many students showed up to protest the event, that it had to be shut down (by Coulter’s bodyguard). Later, she moved on to Calgary where she spoke to a packed house of nearly 2,000 while a smattering of protesters outside vented in a clearly audible (from the auditorium) chant while throwing bricks at the front entrance to the building.
2. Guy Earle, a little-known stand-up comedian has been hit with a BC Human Rights complaint concerning an exchange at a restaurant between him and a heckler, who happened to be a lesbian on a date. Earle apparently used some colorful language to describe the heckler, making liberal use of the word “dyke”, as well as some unflattering suppositions about her sex life. Now Earle is in a Human Rights Tribunal Hearing. He could face financial penalties and even jail time as a result of this. Even if he’s found innocent, the publicity may well have ended his career as a comedian (such as it was).

Those are the unabashed facts. Let me say right off the bat that I really really dislike Ann Coulter. This is as much for her views as her shameless distortion of the facts. However, my understanding of hate speech law (and correct me if I’m wrong) is that the commentary essentially has to be completely devoid of factual content, or when the subject under discussion is basically a relevant political issue, or concerns religious doctrine – in order for it to be considered hate speech. Let’s look at the actual wording of the law. Hate speech is:

… advocating genocide or inciting hatred against any ‘identifiable group’.

An identifiable group is:

… any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.

Let’s deal with Coulter first. A lot of people north of the border probably don’t realize this, but there are a lot more conservatives in the states, and the general tone of conservatism down there is shifted about three notches to the right. Coulter’s kind of talk, while friggin’ nuts, is more popular in a lot of places than it is in up here. It seems to me that cultural relativism is playing a role here in what goes for hate speech. Having listened to a LOT of Ann Coulter’s rhetoric (on YouTube – and believe me, not as a fan) I can tell you that generally speaking, it’s rarely devoid of social or political commentary. In fact, Coulter is a very political individual, and most of what she says relates pretty directly to public policy. The bottom line is that while she may be an unlikeable person, it’s hard to separate objectionable speech from hate speech in this case. Are we leaning a bit more heavily (than people on home turf would) on this person simply because Canada is nowhere near as conservative as the US?

As for Earle, the guy doesn’t strike me as a very good comedian. It actually sounds a lot like two assholes found an instant dislike for one another and it blew up into an ugly scene. Should a comedian (arguably an artist) be barred from making hostile social commentary during a performance even if it borders on hate-speech? I personally think that context needs to be taken into consideration here. An artist by definition will challenge assumptions, tastes, and the status-quo. That’s sortof what we expect from them. And anyone gaudy enough to heckle an artist on-stage has to be able to take it as well as dish it. She took a risk by speaking up and was not prepared for the response. Does that invisible line need to be moved when the type of speech is artistic vs. other forms of commentary?

The bigger question is are we just a wee bit too intolerant of unpopular speech? What kind of society drags somebody through the laundry-press of human-rights tribunals and the court-system for what basically amounts to offensive-speech as opposed to actual purile bonifide Hitler-esque hate-speech? I can’t say that I’ve ever actually been on the receiving end of that kind of talk but I’ve certainly been offended by Ann Coulter, and comedians. I just think to preserve our integrity we need to loosen up or risk becoming a censorship state.

Click here to get the full Powerpoint file.

Thanks go to Allen for organizing a good event. It was also neat to learn a bit about Joyent and where they’re @ (thanks Jim). Sorry I couldnt make drinks afterward. Looking forward to the next one. I for one would be interested in hearing more about HTML5. Also, an hour long “open mike” rail-on-Microsoft would be fun too . Probably should be accompanied by drinks tho.

Live in Vancouver? Want to learn more about JavaScript? Check out the VanJS users group. Incidentally, I’ll be giving a talk on Jan 9 on Offline Storage. Jim Pick will also be talking about Server-Side JS and no doubt some Joyent goodness! I’ll post the slides here afterward.

Sub-topics will include:

• HTML5 Offline Storage Options
• UserData
• Flash Local Shared Object
• Window.name
• probably more.

Also I’ll be giving away a copy of my book to anyone who cares.

• Apple has given PhoneGap a technical analysis , and PhoneGap does not violate the Terms & Conditions of the App Store.
• Apple will review PhoneGap applications based on their own merits and not on their use of PhoneGap.

This is great news for the development community because it means we can continue to write simple cross-platform applications using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and deploy them natively to a number or devices without having to do tonnes of rewrite for each one.

I also decided to include the full source code incase somebody wanted to get in there and fix or add something. As always, feedback is welcome.

Download it here.

• Using the Spry Framework in Dreamweaver CS4 (Arnout Kazemier)  Oct 5th 3:30pm 403B
• Spry Widgets and Dreamweaver CS4 (BYOL) (Chris Converse) Oct 6th 1:00pm 408A
• Ajax for Designers (Greg Rewis) Oct 5th 11:30am 405 + Others
• Skinning JavaScript Framework Widgets in Dreamweaver (Joe Lowery) Oct 7th 3:30pm 402A
• Best Practices in Cross-Browser Testing with Adobe BrowserLab (Kristin Long) Oct 7th 2:00pm 406A + Others
• Roadmap: Web Professional Tools and Services in Creative Suite (Lea Hickman) Oct 7th 5:00pm 504

Basically I’ll be discussing ways that serious JS dev can approached in Dreamweaver, giving demos of some cool new stuff including:

• BrowserLab
• DOM and CSS debugging features
• Framework support
• Web Widgets
• Spry

I’ll also talk about some things to watch out for and talk about where I would like to DW go in the future. MAX is Adobe’s annual conference and will be held between Oct 3-7 in Los Angeles this year.