MAMA: Scripting report, part 1: Basic scripting syntax and features

This week Brian Wilson lifts the lid off the last section of MAMA's research - scripting. In this "bite-size" report, he looks at the methods used to collect script data by MAMA, most popular scripting constructs and script libraries, frequency of usage of different methods for including JavaScript in a page, and more. He even looks at how much VBScript is still out there on the Web.

( Read the article )

I got to the part where you looked for references to specific browsers in script, and immediately realized there was a rather notable absence: "Netscape".

Originally posted by Andrew Gregory:

I got to the part where you looked for references to specific browsers in script, and immediately realized there was a rather notable absence: "Netscape".

This is a good point, and I've tried to figure out why I would have ignored it. It IS a very obvious omission and I think I would have noticed that during development.

I'll definitely add a separate detection for "Netscape", and I'll also store the browser groups like "Mozilla", "Gecko", "Firefox" into separate instances so the use of each type of keyword can allow the indication of even finer detail.

I think I'll also add a detection for the substring "iphone" - can anyone think of any other really interesting substrings that could indicate authors allowing for other specific browsers?

Thanks Andrew!

Historically, "Netscape" is a commonly returned value for the JavaScript Navigator object .appName property. This may have been why I omitted it from the substring search. It doesn't explain why I included "Mozilla" in my group for Firefox, because it is historically returned by most browsers in the Navigator .appCodeName and .userAgent properties.

Separating out the counts for each of these substrings should help clarify these usages in the future.

About the only other strings I could suggest would be "Microsoft", "WebKit", and "KHTML". I don't know why you're concerned about appName vs appCodeName vs userAgent. They're all in script, and all of potential interest.

Originally posted by Andrew Gregory:

I don't know why you're concerned about appName vs appCodeName vs userAgent. They're all in script, and all of potential interest.

Agreed.

I only put that out that as a possible reason I might have ignored "Netscape" in the first place. In retrospect, I feel differently.

I'll add detections for all those strings now.