http://simonwillison.net/2009-10-05T21:15:45+00:00Simon Willison2009-10-05T21:15:45+00:002009-10-05T21:15:45+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2009/Oct/5/adobe/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/abansod_iphone.html">Developing for the Apple iPhone using Flash</a></strong></p> A brilliant feat of engineering: Adobe worked around Apple’s “no runtime allowed” rules by writing a compiler front end for LLVM that compiles ActionScript 3 to ARM assembly code, and apparently ported the regular Flash drawing APIs as well. <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/actionscript">actionscript</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/adobe">adobe</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/compilers">compilers</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/flash">flash</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/hacking">hacking</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/iphone">iphone</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llvm">llvm</a></p>

2007-07-24T15:29:33+00:002007-07-24T15:29:33+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2007/Jul/24/javascriptactionmonkey/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="http://wiki.mozilla.org/JavaScript:ActionMonkey">ActionMonkey</a></strong></p> SpiderMonkey + Tamarin = ActionMonkey. New JavaScript engine for Mozilla 2, incorporating code from Adobe’s Open Source ActionScript VM. <p><small></small>Via <a href="http://ejohn.org/blog/actionmonkey/">John Resig</a></small></p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/actionmonkey">actionmonkey</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/actionscript">actionscript</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/adobe">adobe</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/javascript">javascript</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/mozilla">mozilla</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/spidermonkey">spidermonkey</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/tamarin">tamarin</a></p>

2006-11-09T12:24:45+00:002006-11-09T12:24:45+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2006/Nov/9/tamarin/#atom-tag

<p>On Tuesday, the Mozilla Foundation and Adobe <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/press/mozilla-2006-11-07.html" title="Adobe and Mozilla Foundation to Open Source Flash Player Scripting Engine">announced</a> the <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/">Tamarin project</a>, an open-source ECMAScript virtual machine based on the ActionScript engine used by Flash Player 9.</p> <p>Frank Hecker's <a href="http://www.hecker.org/mozilla/adobe-mozilla-and-tamarin" title="Adobe, Mozilla, and Tamarin">overview</a> of what this means is useful, but <a href="http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/js/tamarin/core/avmplus.h#40">the Tamarin source code itself</a> provides this interesting piece of historical insight:</p> <blockquote cite="http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/js/tamarin/core/avmplus.h#40"> <p>AVM+ is the ActionScript Virtual Machine</p> <p>AVM+ offers an order of magnitude performance increase over the "Classic AVM" in Flash Player 7. Our performance target is 10X.</p> <p>AVM+ implements ActionScript 3.0, the new version of the ActionScript language that is compliant with the ECMAScript Edition 4 standard.</p> <p>AVM+ is also built for modularity. It will be part of the Flash Player, but is a self-contained module which can be incorporated into other programs with ease. It may also be submitted to the ECMA standards organization as a reference implementation of ECMAScript Edition 4.</p> </blockquote> <p>Adobe's reputation for solid engineering shines through here - it seems that what is now Tamarin was designed for integration with other applications from the very start.</p> <p>The most important thing we can expect from this is a serious improvement in JavaScript performance in the Mozilla family of products, thanks to Tamarin's <acronym title="Just In Time">JIT</acronym> compiler that can convert ECMAScript bytecode to machine code at runtime. JavaScript/Ajax applications will run faster, and the Mozilla applications themselves will perform better as much of their UI is written in JavaScript and XUL.</p> <p>This performance boost will benefit other applications as well. Tamarin is being integrated with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpiderMonkey">SpiderMonkey</a>, which is used in a variety of applications such as the <a href="http://widgets.yahoo.com/">Yahoo! Widget Engine</a>.</p> <p>Reading through Brendan Eich's technical overview of <a href="http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2006/10/mozilla_2.html">Mozilla 2</a>, it looks like the Mozilla team also plan on taking advantage of this performance boost to move code from C++ to JavaScript 2 in many places, simplifying their code base and reducing the likelihood of security flaws in the code.</p> <p>Even in these buzzword filled days of Ajax and Web 2.0, JavaScript is still seen as a poor cousin to so-called "real" programming languages. With a high performance open-source VM like Tamarin available, maybe more developers will start to re-examine JavaScript's role outside the browser.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/actionscript">actionscript</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/adobe">adobe</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/javascript">javascript</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/mozilla">mozilla</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/tamarin">tamarin</a></p>